Whenever I come across something that I find especially interesting (for me!) at work, I just write an article. I actually have a backlog of interesting stuff I'd like to blog about, so the subjects are not in short supply :-)
2. How did you start? What was hard? What was easy?
Started 3/4 years ago. It's been always easy, although, I'm quite obsessive about the precision and depth of the subjects I write. In edge cases, I can pour dozens of hours into an article.
Also, sometimes it happens that research for an article leads to nowhere, for example because the article would end up being nothing interesting. Or because I'm not knowledgeable enough, and it's not practically possible to gather the knowledge required to write a consitently good article.
Some stats: almost 50 articles, around 74k words, currently 6k pageviews/month.
3. How do you stay motivated? Do you?
Generally speaking, I do enjoy writing, although I definitely need to handle: 1. the stress of writing subjects that take dozens of hours to research and write 2. the loss of attractiveness that happens to subjects over time.
My best strategy for 2., has been to write immediately about a subject, if I decide to write about it.
Definitely, rather than thinking "how to motivate myself to write an article", I think in terms of "how to remove the demotivating factors".
Regarding the external motivations, seeing the traffic growing is very satisfying, and it also brought me as a speaker to a famous conference, but it wouldn't motivate me if I wouldn't like to write.
4. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)? How did you do it?
Wrote in this in point 3. Something that may be worth adding, is that I write an article more or less once a month. It's quite comfortable as a rhythm, although of course, spending 8+ hours on something, even once a month, may be too stressful in the long term for some.
A consideration worth pointing out, after a quick glance at other posts, is that there are different article styles. I can't write an article in an hour even when I fully know the subject, because when I write 1. I extend the breadth and depth of the subject, 2. I may experiment for the fun of it 3. but also because there's lots of "padding" due to creating a path for the reader to make them easy to fully understand the subject.
Whenever I come across something that I find especially interesting (for me!) at work, I just write an article. I actually have a backlog of interesting stuff I'd like to blog about, so the subjects are not in short supply :-)
2. How did you start? What was hard? What was easy?
Started 3/4 years ago. It's been always easy, although, I'm quite obsessive about the precision and depth of the subjects I write. In edge cases, I can pour dozens of hours into an article.
Also, sometimes it happens that research for an article leads to nowhere, for example because the article would end up being nothing interesting. Or because I'm not knowledgeable enough, and it's not practically possible to gather the knowledge required to write a consitently good article.
Some stats: almost 50 articles, around 74k words, currently 6k pageviews/month.
3. How do you stay motivated? Do you?
Generally speaking, I do enjoy writing, although I definitely need to handle: 1. the stress of writing subjects that take dozens of hours to research and write 2. the loss of attractiveness that happens to subjects over time.
My best strategy for 2., has been to write immediately about a subject, if I decide to write about it.
Definitely, rather than thinking "how to motivate myself to write an article", I think in terms of "how to remove the demotivating factors".
Regarding the external motivations, seeing the traffic growing is very satisfying, and it also brought me as a speaker to a famous conference, but it wouldn't motivate me if I wouldn't like to write.
4. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)? How did you do it?
Wrote in this in point 3. Something that may be worth adding, is that I write an article more or less once a month. It's quite comfortable as a rhythm, although of course, spending 8+ hours on something, even once a month, may be too stressful in the long term for some.
A consideration worth pointing out, after a quick glance at other posts, is that there are different article styles. I can't write an article in an hour even when I fully know the subject, because when I write 1. I extend the breadth and depth of the subject, 2. I may experiment for the fun of it 3. but also because there's lots of "padding" due to creating a path for the reader to make them easy to fully understand the subject.