Last year at the beginning of February, I completed 6 months in the city. On a whim that day I decided to publish a post everyday on this website. The idea was simple – cultivate the habit and discipline to write. Why? Just because. Write what exactly? I had no idea.
Structured, unstructured, free flowing, reflection pieces – all were welcome. Today marks six months of writing everyday. So 52,203 words and 183 posts later, here are some of my reflections to commemorate the six month mark
Writing everyday is hard
It is difficult to tune out and get down to type something out without preparation. Penning your thoughts after a long day takes effort. Writing well researched articles is particularly difficult. It took me a long time to write some of the travel and #BforBombay pieces. Even writing free flowing prose after a particularly bad day was not easy. So yes, it takes deliberate effort to sit down and write a piece. It can be painful also because you end up reconciling with issues that you have been putting off for far too long.
Habit Formation is a process
I think I missed to write one day, in the first week itself. Work was hectic and I had not slept enough. So I remember crashing out and waking up the next day, with a pit in my stomach. Deeply disappointed in myself for having dropped the ball so early. But after that I have tried to not miss the deadline of 11:59 pm everyday. Even if it meant just writing the title of the post and hitting publish. But once I got over that hump, it was easy to carve out the time. I switched to writing on my phone and sometimes using my bluetooth keyboard when I had the space. Writing on the laptop was reserved for the weekend. The only reward for me has been the cross on the calendar for everyday and the 3-4 readers who bother checking the website, now and then.
The ideal time is now
Two years ago when I started the website, I had made an extensive editorial plan for the kind of content that I would focus on publishing. Some of the categories as pages here still indicate my lofty ambitions (a book review every week!). But this time I resolved to simply write. I was very clear that I would just start – no plans, no extensive strategies and no roadmaps. I didn’t wait for the right atmosphere or worse – inspiration. I decided to ditch finding the perfect moment. So I wrote at airports, railway stations, on the train, on the flight, on the bus and on my bed. I missed having a desk and a nice quiet corner. But it didn’t matter as long as I was hitting publish everyday.
Chase the right metrics
I admit when I first saw the google analytics dashboard in ‘22, I was disappointed to see the 90 % bounce rate. I was disappointed with the views and the overall low traffic in spite of the plugs on social media. I was not sure what I was doing wrong. But this time around I started chasing a simple chart that Jetpack provides – frequency of posts – a light green mark on the day. As long as I had a streak of green – I was happy.
Feel Free to Write and Express
I have been very reticent on the internet. And I have been very careful with words. But this time I let loose and didn’t over analyse. I simply wrote. I didn’t even edit much and you can see some glaring typos and grammatical errors in the posts (which I correct on the go). But I didn’t wait for the perfect post before hitting publish.
But at this 6 month mark, here’s what I plan to do differently.
I am going to perfect my craft. Learn the rules of writing and unlearn some of my old habits to become a better writer. I have not written fiction in a long time so I am going to focus on that more.
But I will publish it on The Fourth Seat. I am also going to plan my visits and activities better – in a manner which allows me to write a better post – especially in the travel section. You might have seen a lot of posts about serendipity over the months and perhaps that’s what made those experiences novel and interesting.
I am going to look at the metric of views and sources of traffic a bit more seriously. And experiment based on the data. I am very keen on seeing how readers discover this website without the plugs on social media.
And finally, I am going to open up subscriptions for free to test if that helps feedback and readership. If you have any ideas, feel free to drop me a line.