Average Blog Time, Etc.
Caryn Shechtman
Friday, 20 February 2009 11:52 UTC
I am fairly new to the blogging (exactly one month as of yesterday). Thus, I wanted to see everyone’s take on 2 things:
1. On average, how long does it take for you to complete a blog post? Right now I am at about 2 hours from start to finish. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy every minute of it. But is this the norm? I suspect I will get faster with time.
2. Do you blog on vacation? For many, blogging is lifestyle that blends work with pleasure. When I go on vacation I like to give all my electronic devices a rest (even my cell phone). However, as grow more and more attached to the NN, I think I may have a harder time spending a few days unconnected.
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1. Five minutes to two days. The 2 hours thing is typical when you put care into it. Don’t worry about interspersing with idiotic things like this – it’s when you will get the most comments, anyhow.
2. Not usually. Some do. Take it as you feel like it; your way is the right way.
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(1) I agree with Heather. Sometimes I post something very quick that I’ve seen somewhere or that has just popped into my head. One of the regular things I blog about is to link to my book reviews so that is also usually quite a quick post, as I already put lots of time previously into writing the review! When it is published, I usually write a few thoughts about the book, or select a paragraph from the review, and link to it. At a weekend, sometimes I spend a whole day thinking on and off about a post, and might spend an hour or so writing it. If I were writing technical material (eg describing a scientific paper from scratch) it would take me longer than 2 hours. Maybe 4, but not constant as I would revise a couple of times after leaving the draft(s) for an interval – and extra time is added for looking up references, definitions, etc.
On (2), so far, not. Usually because I don’t take a computer or don’t have internet access. For me, blogging is very interactive, in that I read my RSS reader subscriptions or other social site, this gives me an idea for a post, or I’ve been interacting online and that does, or other. So for me, blogging is tied up with daily life, it would be hard for me to quarry the time out of a family holiday to do it (as it is essentially, again for me, a personal activity while I am doing it, so the people I am with have to be doing something else.) I don’t go on holiday very often, so this is also a factor. If I went on holiday several times a year, I might reconsider! But I am usually totally burnt out before a holiday so spend most of it reading books and not much else (if possible).
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1. 5 minutes to 45 minutes to write a post. If I’m working on a bigger post, I make notes and read snippets of relevant articles for a couple of days and let the facts and ideas reach critical mass in my head. The writing process then resembles more a moment of crystallization than a torturous assembling of facts and is pretty rapid as a result.
2. Yes and no! I’m so scienced out by the end of a day that I find it hard to construct anything on blog related to science. Before I used to write science during evenings and rubbish on vacation. This has switched around now. I do try to spend a few days on vacation disconnected from the electronic world but that’s hard (particularly if the hotel/home has internet).
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1. On average also about 2 hours a post, I think. At least on here. I have another blog that is mainly pictures, and that goes much faster =) I like writing, though, and I spend lots of time writing things that either don’t make it online, or are elsewhere. I took a blog break last fall, not because I didn’t have time, but because I was writing too much and it was all very negative. I have lots of unpublished posts from that time, and in the end only put 2 of them online. It’s an outlet.
2. When I’m away? No. I usually don’t have access to internet, but even when I’m staying with family/friends I don’t want to waste their time by blogging. I do sometimes pre-blog things on my other blog. It’s less personal there, and I don’t always want to say “I’m away, no posts for a while”, so I line up some things to be posted automatically while I’m away. (That doesn’t work on NN blog software, or I’d do it here as well, just to spread things out a bit between periods of active writing (I’m in one now) and writing droughts.
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Thanks eveyone…that was really helpful. It seems that I am right about average.
Eva, that is a good point about the automatic posting. Is that something you would like to see on NN?
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If by ‘automatic’ posting you mean ‘scheduled’ then I’m for it.
I’m assuming we’ll get that with MT4.
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) <- I noticed I forgot a closing parenthesis in my previous comment! Now your comments are in there – ha!
Yes, scheduled. And yes, I would like to see that, but am quietly assuming it’s a standard part of our new up and coming blog software.
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I’m like Katherine – I often think about my more complicated posts for days or even weeks before eventually sitting down to write them. At that point they tend to flow pretty quickly. Thinking of a new idea and sitting down to write it from scratch right away? That would probably take me days.
I don’t usually blog on vacation, but I do jot down notes and ideas whenever they arise. I’m usually crazy busy when I get back to work after a break, so it’s good to have all those semi-done posts in my head!
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1. On average it takes me maybe 3 hours to complete a blog post. I sometimes work on a blog post for more than one day (saving the draft version in MarsEdit). Interviews take less time writing (because somebody else is doing most of the work), but more time organizing.
2. I usually go on summer vacation in places without internet access. And I wouldn’t use an iPhone or internet café to write a blog post. Automated posts would be something I’d try.
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1. On average, how long does it take for you to complete a blog post?
2 hours for writing a “full” post is about right for me too. But as Heather points out, the short posts are often the most commented on and are quick to write.
2. Do you blog on vacation?
Vacation? What’s that?
I guess I might do, if I found something worth blogging about. But aren’t holidays for getting away from stuff?
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