Daily posting

[liv]

I really enjoyed the experiment of filling your prompts every day in January. Thank you all for coming up with such a good set of questions and topics.

It was very good for me to make myself find half an hour every evening to add the day's post. I found that surprisingly often, that time was taken out of time that I'd otherwise fill with something like surfing or playing silly games. Only a few times I was genuinely too busy to update and felt I was missing out on something I positively wanted to be doing because I'd committed to post every day. (That's partly because I deliberately chose to do the meme in a month where I was relatively less busy than some.)

It was also freeing not to have to think, I'd like to post but I don't really know what to talk about. And it was definitely a good habit to just go ahead and post whatever I could manage to type in the time I had available, rather than waiting until I had time to write something either long or well-researched. In practice, I can usually manage to extend my posts, but I very rarely get round to chasing up proper citations for everything I want to say; it's probably good just to post anyway, and if that leaves me open to challenge, well, I can always go digging for evidence reactively.

I felt like I was talking about myself quite a lot, because most people asked me about things like my favourites or my experiences. That's probably ok; I think in general I'd like to keep the balance more towards talking about topics of interest but I know I appreciate it when people give me glimpses into their lives. And I'm thinking of adding a link from my profile to the whole month because it's much better than most other periods of my blog for new people to find out about me.

I just had a look at my analytics and I definitely got more hits in a month of posting every day than I normally do with my couple of posts a week. 60-100 unique visitors every weekday in January, compared to the lower end of that range on days I post and a scattering on other days. (My PhD post from over a year ago is still 5 times more popular than anything I've posted recently, and that's not cumulative, that's during the month of January 2014. But there you go.) The problem is that it didn't really feel like I was getting more of an audience. I enjoyed answering prompts from people who primarily lurk, but I didn't get all that many comments. People have mentioned to me explicitly that the sheer volume of what I was posting (averaging almost exactly 1000 words a day for the whole month) made it hard to comment. I really appreciate the people who put smilies or hearts on my posts when they didn't have time for detailed discussions, thank you. But still, it's conversations that I really love and the daily posting seemed to reduce that, rather than increase it as I'd hoped.

That's partly because there's not very much to say if I simply tell you about something in my life; opinion blogging is much better for attracting comments. It's also partly because the daily posting meant I really didn't have as much time as I usually do to answer comments. I think on the whole it's better for me to fall back to posting a couple of times a week, and use the intervening days for discussing what I post. As well as for commenting on other people's posts; I have been reading my d-roll in more of a hurry than I often do, because I wanted to leave enough time to fill my prompts.

The other thing I haven't had time for is to make the posts I wanted to make; responses to articles that are being discussed all over the internet, book reviews (I've started reading again after not feeling much like it at the end of 2013), accounts of the fun things I've been doing such as the #croydonfunweekend, stuff that's in my head. So I probably don't want to repeat the daily posting thing at least for a while, and I'm glad I'm not trying to run this blog as a business (whether getting paid directly, or through adverts, or simply establishing my brand and reputation in order to get more paid work in a related area). But I am going to take forward some of what I've learned from this. If I have something to say there's a good chance I can find half an hour to do it. It's better to just post something timely than to wait until I have a complete or good post. Surprisingly many people are interested in my extremely random thoughts about whatever happens to cross my radar, and I have opinions even about topics I wouldn't have said I think about a lot.

I am also going to make a list of leftover stuff from January, so that I still have a bank of prompts for whenever I think, I should update DW but I'm not sure what to talk about. And because I do in fact want to answer your supplementary questions and continue the discussions I didn't have time for due to daily posting.

• Actual recipes as well as just talking about recipes in general, particularly lentil sauce for redbird.
• Inherited jewellery from my family, wearing a wedding ring, finishing up what I wanted to say about jewellery
• For kerrypolka, why do I feel disloyal about not choosing Shakespeare as a favourite?
• For shreena, recommendations of good games for two
• For lavendersparkle, ideological issues with Hadar and Pardes
• Continued conversation about living abroad and Sweden in particular
• Continued conversation about single-sex education and women being influenced to be subordinate
• Strong feelings and political influence for ptc24 and igmansfield.co.uk and the anon who had interesting points in that discussion
• Various comments on the books I recommended
• For lethargic_man, What makes me cry in the HHD liturgy
• For Screwy, actually reading Charlotte Cooper on fat activism and commenting on that
• Continuing the excellent discussion on health
• For redbird, not being perceived socially as a couple
• An access-locked followup to the poly post

That should certainly keep me going for a while, especially with the backlog of everything that I wanted to post in January but I relegated to after I'd finished the meme!

Comments

[wildeabandon]

I've enjoyed your posts this month, but I think I also prefer the more conversationy ones that seem to happen when it's more current events/opiniony content.

If you'd be comfortable with it I'd be quite keen to see the follow-up to the poly post when it happens, but of course it's absolutely fine if not.

[liv]

That's a completely fair comment, and thank you for confirming my opinion of the meme.

I'll add you to the poly filter; backstory here, until I get round to the followup post. That also contains the reasons why I'm being a bit cagey about who reads this stuff.

[pretty_panther]

I really enjoyed reading what you had to say. I just...didn't always understand bits and pieces so didn't say anything.

I really enjoyed when I did it in December for the same reasons. I got a lot more...general and fandomish questions so I couldn't get as stuck in on certain topics but I really loved when I had to wrack my brains to come up with something. Though I may have loved defending Thor lol

I think it would be cool if this was a yearly thing either in December or January because I've found it a really interesting exercise on my flist and I'm seeing people take it up for February too so, that is pretty awesome.

[liv]

That's cool, I didn't at all mean to criticize anyone for not commenting. And I know I'm bad at commenting on your posts, I often see things I'm interested in and mean to comment and don't get round to it. I'm with you in hoping the trend continues, I've really enjoyed the uptick in personal, thinky content.

[angelofthenorth]

I've really enjoyed the posting meme, and got a lot out of reading. I think if it was done again, the questions might be deeper, because you could refer to what was asked the previous time, and that becomes a conversation in and of itself.

[liv]

That's a good point. I am lucky enough to have picked up quite a few readers who don't really know me personally, just like some of what I post. So they might well not know what questions would elicit interesting answers. I will think about doing it again, but perhaps in a less intensive way than every day for a month. And thank you for commenting to say that you enjoyed reading my babble.

[daharyn]

Catching up on these posts was a lot of fun for me, and very interesting. I tried to drop in a few comments along the way, but I do see what you're saying about receiving fewer than usual. I think angelofthenorth's idea about deeper questions the second time round would be cool--tracking the growth of the conversation would be fun in and of itself.

(Also, I'm taken by the thought of using January as a month to push yourself to provide content. I made myself take at least one photo every day; it wasn't without effort, and it definitely happened in a relative vacuum--there wasn't any public component to that besides the end product--but I really dug the results.)

[liv]

Thank you so much for this comment, and the others. I am really pleased that you found my month of posts fun. When I said I was getting fewer comments I didn't really mean to complain about you, I'm grateful that you read my stuff at all considering that you're not really on DW. And especially considering that I'm not at all good at coming across how I intend when I interact with you.

I am definitely glad I did the January thing, just the discipline of it as well as some of the topics helping to clarify my thoughts. It's not quite morning pages, but heading that way, the fact of writing daily and just ploughing through without editing or writing defensively.

I had a look at your Flickr set and I'm really impressed, just seeing the macros, still lifes and cityscapes together like that really points up what a good eye you have for composition. Yay photography.

[daharyn]

Thanks for the compliments on the photography. I wasn't fishing for them but I really appreciate it. I don't get a lot of feedback. When I first started taking photographs I got positive responses quite early and now I feel like most people who see my photos think, "well, she obviously knows she does a good job; I don't need to say anything". And so many people do photography now--the visual has become a bigger part of our culture and it's harder to stand out from the crowd.

I didn't take the comment on "fewer comments than usual" at all personally; it was more that I was observing and corroborating your thoughts on more content meaning your readers feel, perhaps, less urgency to respond to each post? I know I catch up with your writing in big batches, so that probably doesn't help--I was more trying to describe my process of "oh, I'll read liv's last ten posts," and finding that even with a lot of content I had stuff to say and share back with you. Which was really quite nice.

Now I'm avoiding the size acceptance discussion, where I had some intense reactions, not so much to your post but to the other comments. I decided I would do a better job of communicating with you (an area where I also feel uncertain) if I stuck to things I felt were a little less... personal? I guess? I'm having trouble coming up with the best word. But there are ways in which that particular fight is so personal and my stake in it so well-defined that I really can't stand to see it "debated" publicly. Too many past traumas!

[hunningham]

I've enjoyed reading the posts, so thank-you. I must say I found myself going Eep at the ".. very good for me to make myself find half an hour every evening". It only takes you half-an-hour to write these lengthy, delightful and very thoughtful posts?

[liv]

Thank you for commenting to say so. I know you personally don't always find it easy to comment on DW posts, so this means a lot.

Half an hour: yes, if I have been planning the post mentally for a few days beforehand, as I was able to do for the January meme, and I've only got half an hour available, and I just sit down and type without stopping to compose sentences, I can turn out about 1000 words in half an hour. Some of the very long posts took longer than that, and some took longer because I wrote them while multi-tasking with chatting in IM or reading stuff in other tabs. So it's not the case that it was literally half an hour every evening, it's just that that's the minimum I need to be able to make a substantial post.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it, and I commented more than I usually do, which I appreciate isn't very much.

I have no inclination to do this meme myself, because I have the opposite problem from "I'd like to post but I don't really know what to talk about": lots of ideas for posts, and never the time to sit down in front of a computer and type them up. Sometimes I get quite far composing the specific wording in my head, but then end up forgetting it before it gets as far as the keyboard. I have lists of topics I meant to post about, where I wrote down the topic to remind myself, but have still forgotten the details of what I wanted to say.

[liv]

Gosh, you have a toddler and a baby, I'm amazed you have time to make any posts at all! I do sometimes have the problem of more ideas than time available to post about them, but equally that sometimes leads to having six things I want to say and not really being able to choose between them. Or I don't have time to do a topic justice so I leave it and by the time I get round to it it's not topical or I've forgotten what I wanted to say or I'm unmotivated.

Thank you for commenting to say you enjoyed the January posts, I really appreciate that you joined in the discussion and that you let me know you enjoyed the meme.