I wrote in my recent reflections that I would like to write more “outside the blog”, by which I meant a place I could jot down thoughts about recent articles, share reader questions (and my answers) more quickly, and in general create less-than-official posts. This is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile, because it frequently happens that I have something I want to share that ultimately gets lost in a limbo of refinement as I try to distill my thought into a cohesive, in-depth article.
I suppose a big problem is the way I categorize writing. To me, a blog post feels cheap, like I’m not giving my readers enough to chew on. When I cover a topic, I want to address it from as many angles as I realistically can, not give you a single side and then leave you hanging. Of course, not every topic needs this sort of in-depth treatment, and I end up just accidentally withholding a bunch of potentially useful information because I want to build it into something it could never be!
A perfect example of this is reader questions. In a typical week, I receive an average of two questions, all of which I personally answer. Much of the time, these questions are of relevance to everyone, not just the querier—but I usually don’t end up publishing my answers until weeks or months later when I’ve collected enough “complicated” questions to form an entire article. Basically, I get hung up on not wanting to publish a sub-500-word article and then end up not sharing at all. This post format will allow me to share without the hang-ups.
A second reason for this new post format is to allow me to write “rougher” posts. I spend more time editing than writing on any given article to make sure everything I write is clear, cogent, concise, and properly structured. After I finish writing and editing, I go and find (often pseudo) relevant photos that I have the rights to, edit them and add text, and then upload them. This doesn’t take more than a half hour usually, but it’s quite honestly one of my least favorite tasks. Nonetheless, I don’t want to share articles that I haven’t taken the time to illustrate, and so—again—I end up not writing.
To summarize, I created this new “Quick Post” (name subject to change) category so I can share thoughts with you without feeling the pressure to build, refine, and illustrate them. Of course, I will continue to write “official” blog posts, and those posts will continue to be well-refined, edited, and illustrated—I just also want to be able to take a few minutes to share simple thoughts as they come to me.
Oh, one more thing: these posts will not be featured in my blog feed, but will always be accessible from the sidebar, category page, or search. Hope you enjoy them!
