Last Updated on February 19, 2024
I think most of us who blog with there were more hours in the day to keep up with deadlines. But writing fast doesn’t always help you.
You have a post due tomorrow. Time’s running out. Writing fast to crash a post together seems like the best option to meet that deadline.
But is it?
Probably not.
In fact, writing fast could mean you’re skimping on quality just to fill a slot. We’ve all been there. That’s why I dropped my posting schedule from seven days a week to five. I felt there were times I’d crashed something together to have something to publish.
Different bloggers write differently.
What works for me won’t necessarily work for you. And vice versa.
I ran across a post recently about how to crank out blog posts quickly. The writer actually used the phrase “crank out” content. Does that sound like quantity over quality to you? It sure does to me.
Granted, maybe that’s not at all what the writer meant. But that phrasing implies otherwise.
The writer also advocated setting a clock on blog post writing. The time the writer allotted for writing a post was 25 minutes. Granted, the writer did advocate outlining in advance, but the actual writing time was set by a timer to less than a half hour.
Can you write a quality post in just 25 minutes? Maybe you can. Sometimes, that may be as long as it takes. But sometimes, you can’t possibly write a thorough, well-written and well-argued post in that short a time.
Orbit Media recently released the results of its 7th annual blogger survey. This time around, it found that one in five bloggers actually spend more than six hours writing a post.
No, six hours won’t guarantee a post is more informative or more entertaining than what you might write in 25 minutes.
But it certainly means a more thought-out post.
Some of us work better under deadline pressure. Unfortunately, some of us only think we work better under deadline pressure. We don’t really.
Deadline pressure only makes some of us rush to finish…and as a result, the blog suffers.
An editorial calendar and planning ahead works better (for me) than a 25-minute timer ever would. That’s not to say I couldn’t “crank out” a post in 25 minutes. And maybe, once in a while, you couldn’t even tell it only took 25 minutes.
But I know my writing. And I suspect you could probably tell the difference.
