This was originally written with the previous entry on nonsense as quality. I was sinning against one of my writing secrets (One thing at a time) I share in this post so I decided to follow my own tip and split the post.
The past few weeks I've been trying to work on/with my content. Increase quality. Quantity however has decreased, but hey, you can't have it all right? Here are a few things that have changed my writing attitude:
<!--more-->- Write about what I know: this might sound easy, but it's not. When I first started this blog I wanted to provide lots of content and I'd just write about practically anything. But if I didn't know (enough about) what it is I was writing about I won't be able to get a decent post out.
- Set an overall topic: this one slightly follows up to the previous. For me it's rather important to have a certain overall subject for this site. It did lead to a decrease in entries but I feel it did the quality of the things I want to write about good.
- Take my time: in the beginning I'd post just to post. Some entries didn't get the attention they deserved, making some of them horrible to read and full of spelling mistakes. Now I first think about the message I want a certain entry to bring forth. Then I start writing, plain text in notepad. Code can be added afterwards. It is also very important for me to re-read my entry, damn that spelling. (Sometimes I let someone else act as spellchecker.)
- Don't sit on it too long: if I have something to say it's important that I do it as fast as I can. If I wait, say a week before writing my entry, it's long gone or I'm not in the mood anymore to write about it, eventhough it might have been a good topic. Sometimes it even happens that someone beat me into writing an entry about it.
- Don't hold back: in addition to the previous. If I have written a post I publish it. No need to hold a post back when I just posted something else five minutes ago, all for the sake of something called an update frequency.
- One thing at a time: I have this bad habbit of thinking about several things at the same time. I try to structure everything in my head instead of writing it down. This could lead to posts where I start talking about a second topic without making my point about what I started writing about. This can be confusing.
What are your writing secrets?