The structure of my work

Until I get to the point at which I’m being properly productive with blogging, this is the structure I’ve set up.

  • Medium: For professional (or at least polished) work. I’m holding off a bit on this initially, because my writing muscle needs some work before I’m back at that level.
  • Blogger Posthaven: For thoughts like this one. How I’m getting on with blogging.
  • Personal journal: For personal notes on blogging that I wouldn’t make here. Also for outlining and shaping articles.
  • Stream-of-consciousness journal: Simply for writing. The purpose of this one is to force myself to write anything at all to a target, such as 30 minutes or 1,000 words.

On days like today, when I can’t get going in any way that resembles quality or coherence, I’ll either whine about it in my personal journal or do a stream-of-consciousness sprint to lubricate the cogs of my brain. That way I have somewhere to be productive, whether it’s wasting time typing garbage or structuring thoughts into something publishable.

(first posted on ooh-thats-mustard.blogspot.com)

Why

I'm jumping back into writing, but this time I want it to be permanent.

I've set up a Medium account and will start writing on that, at least initially. The appeal of Medium is that I can write about anything I want—it doesn't have to be a one-topic blog, and I don't need multiple blogs to cover my interests. There's also a community of people who might actually see what I write. That's it.

This blog is for me to thrash out my thoughts about this whole process: the reason I'm writing, my thoughts about writing, discussion of my struggles and mental blocks, exasperated outbursts. That sort of thing.

The goal of writing is long term, but what I expect to achieve is short term. Right now I don't want to think past this. Every web search on blogging in 2022 returns links galore about monetisation and career blogging and referrals and 'building your business'. No. I just want to enjoy writing again. If this works for me personally—if it makes me happy, if it's deeply satisfying, if it builds skills I know I can sustain and get lost in—then, and only then, will I think further than writing stuff on the internet.

If I do anything with this specific blog, it'll be to tidy up the layout and perhaps buy a cheap domain name. I just want to focus on writing.

(first posted on ooh-thats-mustard.blogspot.com)