For a while I tried to publish something every week. It worked, in the sense that things got published. It failed in every other sense.
What a schedule does
A schedule turns writing into a deadline, and deadlines reward the nearest finished thing, not the best one. I noticed I was choosing topics by how quickly I could wrap them up, not by how much they mattered to me.
The posts were fine. That was the problem. They were all just fine.
What changed
I dropped the schedule and kept a single rule: don’t publish until you can state the point in one sentence.
That one rule did more than any amount of discipline:
- Half of my drafts turned out not to have a point yet. They became notes instead.
- The other half got shorter, because I knew what to cut.
- I started enjoying the revision, which is where the thinking actually happens.
Notes as a pressure valve
Slowing down only works if there is somewhere for the fast thoughts to go. That is what the notes section on this site is for. A note has no bar except “worth keeping”. Some of them grow into essays months later; most don’t, and that’s fine.
A draft is a question. An essay is what’s left after you’ve answered it.
I publish less now. I like what I publish more.