A Blogger’s Guide To Writing a Five Minute Post

You might be upset when you find out that I wrote this post in more than five minutes and less than 15. You might say that I am not meeting my obligation to deliver what I promised and I’ll say so what.

That is not because I don’t care what you have to say but because I want to know if you are missing the trees for the forest. My guess is that many of us are so wrapped up in our daily lives we lose sight of what is truly important. That is not a lead in to a rant or lecture about spending more time with family or focusing on what is most important.

Rather it is a reminder that there is no single path to success in blogging. If there is any one true rule to follow it is that you find success when you connect with readers and or provide solutions to their problems. That is it. Not complicated at all, at least in theory it isn’t.

What I Find Most Challenging

The two things that I wrestle with most are time and technical expertise.

I can compose and publish content faster than most people. Some of that is due to natural ability and some of that is based upon practice. Every post has a beginning, middle and end. All I do is fill in the gaps.

But that doesn’t relieve me of the challenge of trying to find artwork to go with these posts. I like to have more pictures in these things than I do. Sometimes it is a bit austere for my taste. Time constraints make it harder for me to visit and comment on as many blogs as I would like. They also make it harder to make some of the changes here that I want.

That ties into my second challenge, technical expertise. I am tech saavy and I know how to do a lot of things. Most of what I know is from tinkering around here and or watching/reading tutorials. But sometimes that leaves this joint looking a bit more worn than I want it to. Sometimes I wind up with some issues that I can’t figure out how to solve and that irritates me.

For example, I need to fix the archives page. There is way too much going on there and I want to clean it up. I am guessing that it is a relatively simple fix, but I haven’t figured it out. I bet that I just overlooked it and that when it is solved I’ll smack myself in the forehead, but that isn’t how I like to operate.

The pages don’t load as quickly as I want them to and there are other little details that I notice all the time. I have been able to make some improvements but not as many as I want to. Much of that is because I don’t have the time to read and tweak the way I want to.

Did I mention that I have broken my blog more time than I can count. Yep, I have caused it to melt down and then scrambled to fix it.

The Difference Between Great And Good Enough

In a perfect world I would have a crack team of  IT professionals working on the blog. They would take care of all of these details and I would be able to focus on my core strengths. In a perfect world you would read about my mistakes but you wouldn’t see them because I would have time to work out the kinks in advance.

That perfect world doesn’t exist but I am working on it.

“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Vince Lombardi

I am chasing excellence. I decided to create a newsletter for many reasons not the least of which is that chase. I am figuring it out as I go. There aren’t many subscribers yet and I haven’t sent out my first edition, but I am excited about it.

Excited and nervous. AWeber is supposed to make this easy for me and thus far it seems to be, but what if I screw up. What if I send out something ridiculous. Am I upholding my effort to chase perfection and catch excellence?

My answer is yes. My answer is that I am learning how to fly on the run and I am good with that. My answer is that there is value in learning by doing. My answer is that I fueling my fire and feeding my passion. I think that is contagious and that it is going to help me.

So I am going to keep running after perfection and I am going to keep testing out new ideas. How about you? What are you doing out here in the wild and woolly blogosphere? Are you having fun or is this just work.

BTW, it took me almost 13 minutes to write this. The time it took to write this doesn’t really matter to anyone but me. The real question is whether you enjoyed it. Ok, I am out of here, my bed is calling my name. See you in the A.M.

• Saved: Blogging, Writing