Vim looks like it sucks. Here’s why it’s my favorite writing tool

How an old text editor from the 1970’s is actually the universal text editor with hidden super powers, and why you should use it to become a great writer.

Vim: it’s not much to look at — a flashing cursor, a column of tildes along the left side. Some random numbers and words along the bottom, maybe. It looks like a computer program from 1976, because that’s exactly what it is.

If you start vim in the Terminal, this is what you’ll see

Why would anyone want to use this text editor, when there are decades of improvements and features in programs like Word, Pages, Docs, whatever?

It doesn’t have a menu bar, it doesn’t have a tool bar, what’s going on?

You can’t even format the text. There’s no bold, or italics, no fonts. That’s because vim is a text editor: like Notepad in Windows, it only allows you to enter letters, numbers, and punctuation — no formatting.

What are you supposed to do with this program, anyway?

Write. It’s for writing, and editing. It’s not for page layout, formatting, or inserting graphics. It won’t post what you wrote to social media, or to your blog.

It’s a pure writer’s tool — simple, fast, reliable.

You can write code, you can write prose. Vim gets out of your way and lets you get work done.

One of vim’s best features, in my opinion, is the completely bare user interface. There’s nothing to distract you. It’s time to write.

You try it out. It’s easy, if you know how to type. If you don’t know how to touch type, you aren’t going to like vim. But if your fingers are comfortable on the home row, you’ll love vim.

It’s not designed for a mouse (although you can use one, if you want — but why bother?). It’s designed for typing, fast.

How do I use vim?

There are two ways to use vim:

• launch it from the command line.
• run it as an app.

Wait, what? The command line? What is this, 1976? We’re well into the 21st century. What about the mouse, the taps, the swipes?

We’re here to write. We’re going to use the keyboard, that’s it. The idea is to keep your fingers on the keyboard, not to paw at your desk, trying to find your mouse, or poke at your screen like some dazzled chimp.

Your computer has some kind of command line feature, whether you’re running Windows, Mac, or Linux. If you have a Mac or Linux computer, you’ve already got vim installed. In fact, vim is available for for free for pretty much any computer operating system. Plus, it’s free.

If it’s free, it must suck

Vim is free because it’s open source software, not because it sucks. In fact, it’s fast, reliable, and hardly uses any disk space, RAM, or CPU cycles. It’s incredibly responsive. No more waiting for the cursor to catch up with your typing, even if you have a slow computer.

But the real reason it’s so fast is because you never have to take your hands away from the keyboard.

To run vim from your Mac or Linux computer, just open Terminal and enter:

vim

That’s it.

Pro Tip: Once you start vim in Terminal, use your Full Screen button on the Terminal window (or the F11 key). Now vim takes up the whole screen, and there’s nothing to distract you at all.

If this is too intense, and you miss your system menu bar and window controls, you can run vim as an app.

Running vim as an app is a great way to learn about some of its more powerful features, because you can explore the commands in the menu bar. But I encourage you to run vim from Terminal, because you probably already have all the software you need right now.

If you’re running Windows, or even DOS, you can download a version of vim that runs on your computer from the Vim website.

In fact, you can download vim for just about any computer on the vim download page, including different vim apps, like MacVim, that you can launch without using the command line.

So go ahead and start vim on your Mac or Linux computer, or download the version of vim that runs on your computer, and start it up!

I’ve got vim running and I type and nothing happens. This program sucks!

OK, you’ve got vim running, and it’s filled up the whole screen, and there’s nothing on the screen to distract you, but there’s nothing there to help you out, either. When you type, nothing happens.

That’s because vim uses modes, which means you’re going to use the keyboard to:

• edit text in normal mode (this is also your “home base,” where you can access all the other modes);
• enter text, in insert mode;
• enter commands in command-line mode;
• select text to cut, copy and paste in visual mode.

There are a few more modes, but these are the ones you’re going to use 99% of the time. When you start vim, you start in normal mode. Again, think of normal mode as your home base in vim.

I just want to write. Why do I have to remember all this stuff?

If you’re a writer, you’re probably already using “modes” when you write. You’re either creating new text in writing, or creative, mode, or you’re editing the text you created.

It’s hard to write well if you’re constantly stopping to edit what you just wrote.

Good writers separate the creating and the editing, and vim helps you do that too, because that’s exactly how vim works.

Vim works like you do: to create new text, you switch to insert mode to insert new text on the screen where the cursor is. Just hit i to enter insert mode — the word — INSERT — will appear on the bottom left corner of the screen on the last line. This bottom line on the vim screen is the status line and it will tell you which mode you’re in, among other things.

After you press i to go to insert mode, just start typing. Your text appears right at the easy-to-find cursor.

There’s nothing to distract you from your writing. There’s no auto-correct, or automatic suggestions from Google or Apple, no red zig-zags under words the computer doesn’t recognize. Just what you type, that’s what you get.

In vim, What You Type Is What You Get: WYTIWYG, pronounced “witty-wig.”

It doesn’t look fancy, so you don’t have to worry about picking a font or setting up the margins, or anything else besides writing. Just go to Insert mode and get to work.

OK, this is pretty cool

If you’re using vim, full screen, typing away in insert mode, there’s nothing else on the screen to distract you: no flashing icons, no other windows with browser tabs or emails to tempt you away from your writing.

There are no palettes, toolbars, or rulers to clutter up your screen. Vim is a text editor, so you can’t format the text anyway.

Vim shows just the cursor and what you type. That’s it. Do you feel that zen-like calm descend upon you as you slip into the zone, cranking out hundreds of words in a matter of minutes? I do.

Made a mistake? No problem, you can go back and fix it later. You can even run the spell checker. But right now, you’re in creative mode (also known as insert mode in vim). Write some words here!

Of course, you can use the Backspace key in insert mode to remove any characters you just typed.

All right! I wrote some good stuff, and now I need to save it

After you’ve written for a while, you’ll probably want to save your file. If you just started vim at the command line, or launched a vim app, you haven’t given your file a name yet.

To save your file with a new name, you’re going to go back to normal mode to get to the command line. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually really easy.

To get to normal mode (you can do this any time in vim if you’re not sure what’s going on), just press:

Esc

You’ll notice that the — INSERT — indicator disappears from the bottom of your screen. Now, there’s nothing in that lower left corner, on your vim status bar. This means you’re back in normal mode.

If you’re not sure, just press the Esc key, as many times as you want. You won’t break anything! This program’s been around since the 70’s, it can handle it.

In normal mode, you can access the command line. It’s easy — just press

:

You’ll know it worked because the : shows up in the lower left corner of your vim screen. That’s the command prompt.

Do you want to make it go away? Just press Esc — that will always take you back to normal mode, which is like your home base in vim.

From normal mode you can go to:

• insert mode — press i
• command line — press :

That’s how to switch between the modes — easy to remember. If you want to learn it now, try switching between the three modes:

Esc i Esc : Esc

Watch the status line at the bottom left of the vim screen to see which mode you’re in.

So how do we save our new file? First, go to the command line:

Esc :

Now type the write command and give your file a new name, like this:

:w ~/vimfile.txt

and press Enter to save your file. This writes the file into your home directory (~/) with the name vimfile.txt.

In command line mode, your command appears on the status bar

If that worked, you’ll see something like this on the status bar on the lower left (the number of lines and characters will change depending on how much you type):

"~/vimfile.txt" [New] 1L, 55C written

Now, to go back to entering text, press A (Shift – a) to append new text. That automatically puts you into insert mode at the end of the current line.

Now, just type away. When you want to save, you don’t have to list a file name, because you’ve already named and saved your new file.. Just press:

Esc :w Enter A

This key sequence will;

1. Put you in normal mode (Esc)
2. Go to the vim command line (:)
3. Write your file (w Enter)
4. Return you to insert mode at the end of the current line (A)

Maybe that seems like a lot, but since you’ll do this sequence of commands over and over again, pretty soon it will be automatic, muscle memory:

Esc :w Enter A

Now you’ve discovered the secret power of vim. You can control the program with quick key combinations that you’ll memorize quickly, because you’ll use them so many times when you’re writing.

Once you’re done working on your new file, you can save and quit vim with this key sequence:

Esc :wq Enter

That’s very similar to the key sequence you use to save your file, with a slight difference: :wq tells vim to write the file, then quit.

What’s next with vim?

The next step is to learn how to edit in vim’s normal mode. But you don’t have to do that.

Once you’ve written your rough draft in vim, because it’s a simple text file, you can open your file in pretty much any word processor or page layout program if you want to edit, format, or lay out the text you’ve entered.

Vim helps you keep the editing work separate from the writing. Vim also turns your computer into a distraction-free writing machine. Try it out!

Remember, it’s free, and the files vim creates are compatible with any program that can read a text file.

Let me know what you think of vim in the comments below.

9 habits for writing every day

If you want to be a writer, or improve your writing, or reach a wider audience, you have to write. Here are 9 habits that helped me learn how to write every day.

• Be physically comfortable: Get a good chair and desk. I prefer a lap desk for typing with a Bluetooth keyboard. If you can look up, ahead, instead of down, I think that’s even better. It’s easy if you have a notebook or a laptop, or even a tablet or a phone – just prop it up high so you don’t have to hunch over. I like to write in different locations, but I can usually set up a pretty comfortable arrangement with just a chair or a stool, and some kind of desk for the keyboard.
• Water, nearby: Writing is thirsty work. I also like coffee or tea, but I keep it simple. Writing can be a time to recharge. I recharge my devices (phone, tablet, laptop) when I’m writing so I’m ready to write later. Same with staying hydrated
• Follow a schedule, even if it’s just deciding to stand up from writing every half hour. When I want to be productive, I use a pomodoro timer to schedule breaks. I can stay very focused, almost regardless of my environment, when I schedule breaks every 25 min. Taking breaks or resting is equally important to actually writing. Find the time of day that’s best for you to both write, and rest. I like to write in the morning, but everyone is different. Sometimes I write just before I go to sleep.
• Write every day. Honestly, if you just carry a little spiral notebook and write something in that every day, if it’s even just the date and the time, well, you’ve written every day. Build the habit from the simplest, most basic action.
• Track your writing, Save it somewhere safe, and even private. Count it out. How many words? How much time did you spend actually writing? Tracking how much you write now will help you write more in the future. Simple information is useful. How many words did you write? Did you write a few minutes, or a couple of hours? Learn from what works and what doesn’t.
• Give yourself some time to just write, even if it’s garbage. Some people set a timer. I shoot for 750 words a day where I just don’t care what I write, as long as I’m moving the cursor. Sometimes it is garbage, but I don’t care. Once in a while, I stumble on something that’s worth exploring. But, for just a few minutes a day (maybe 20 or so) just tell the editor part of your to take a break, and just write.
• Separate writing from editing: It was probably different when everyone had to use quill pens, but now, it’s easy to produce words, a valuable skill in its own right. Create, then edit later. Maybe even much later – that’s one of the great things about writing. You can pick it up later. Just keep producing.
• Write about what you learn: If I learn something new, I figure it’s a good day. If I want to remember what I learn, I write about it — that’s even better. Even if no one else ever reads my notes, I wrote it out and that helps me figure all kinds of things out.
• Remember that you can’t edit until you write, and you shouldn’t publish without editing. So it all starts with the writing. Get the habit of writing first. Only after you’ve written something, every day, should you try to edit and re-arrange.

You don’t have to do all of these things, all of the time. Instead, try to focus on building and installing one habit at a time. A habit is something you do automatically without having to think about it. If you make writing a habit, then you’ll write, a lot!

Do you know how many words you already write each day? If you’re spending time online, chatting and emailing, you probably generate a lot of words. If you count the total number of words you produce every day, you might be surprised. I keep an editor window open all the time, and I just paste my daily writing in that window.

If you don’t have to write for work, write for yourself. Maybe even have fun, or vent. But the most important thing is to write, even if it’s just for a minute or two.

What are the habits you cultivated to help you write every day? Add a comment below:

Will Gmail’s new autocomplete feature lead to the downfall of modern civilization?

The new update to Gmail includes a new autocomplete feature. Much like the autocomplete on your phone, this autocomplete looks at what you’re typing and then makes a remarkably accurate guess as to what you’re trying to say.

Unlike the autocomplete on your phone, though, the Gmail autocomplete attempts to finish the sentence you’re working on, not just the word that you’re pecking out on your phone’s tiny onscreen keyboard.

Google finishes your hackneyed, cliche-ridden writing for you

The suggested conclusion to the sentence you’re typing out appears in grey type to the right of your cursor, and you just need to press Tab to skip your cursor to the end of the proposed sentence to enter it into your email and get on with typing out the next business cliché.

This feature is a more advanced and interactive version of Gmail’s existing “suggested reply” feature, where Gmail displays two or three possible replies at the bottom of a new emails (always with the exclamation points!).

Usually these suggested replies are pretty simple, like “Got it!” or “Thanks!” or “Sorry, I can’t make it.” Gmail (or more accurately, the giant silicon brain that makes it work) reads all of your incoming email – you knew this already, right? – and then figures out several likely replies for you, based on the incoming email’s contents.

These suggested replies are incredibly helpful if you’re just zipping through your inbox on your phone and want to say yes or no to a simple email request. It’s incredibly fast and convenient, and of course most email is really this simple kind of request – reply exchange, like: “Can you make a meeting tomorrow at 9:30?” “Sure, no problem!”

This  “suggested reply” seemed incredibly helpful. a reasonable extension of the autocomplete feature in Google Search. It seems that Google is just making a reasonable guess at what you probably mean to say, before you’ve finished typing it.

Because Google’s hive mind in the cloud sees probably billions of searches and emails, and is carefully watching as we type every one, it’s pretty good at guessing what we want to type.

Now that this has gone from the benign “Did you mean?” notice at the top of your search results, to typing out what you want to search for in the first place before you can, to offering a few possible replies to your incoming emails, to finishing your sentences for you while you type out your emails, have we reached a tipping point?

In Google’s defense, it’s not like Gmail is the home of incredibly exciting creative writing. Email is largely the exchange of pleasantries and business clichés. That’s what made me a little uncomfortable at first: Google knew the mindless cliché that I wanted to type out before I did. Am I really that much of an drone that a computer can guess what I’m trying to say so readily and accurately?

Well, evidently, yes.

But then I noticed something a little more subtle and insidious: Google would suggest a way to end my sentence that wasn’t exactly what I was going to say, but was close enough. So, bang! I’d hit that handy Tab key and just go with Google’s suggestion, and move on to the next sentence.

This is is the same issue that plagues Google’s search autocomplete feature: when you are searching for something and Google’s guess is close enough that you don’t bother to type out exactly what you’re searching for, and you just go with the suggestion.

In this way, the autocomplete suggestions become little self-fulfilling prophecies of our collective intentions: Google knows what you meant to search for because here’s what everyone else is searching for – of course everyone else is searching for that! It’s what Google said you should search for.

Now our robots can save us from the pain of talking to each other and just converse among themselves

In this way Google is doing our thinking for us, and subtly encouraging us to just go along with what everyone else is already thinking, or more accurately, what Google wants everyone else to think already.

I don’t think this is nefarious on Google’s part, it’s not some giant brainwashing conspiracy. It’s just a great example of how “artificial intelligence” is doing more and more work for us in subtle ways that nudge us all to say the same thing, or search for the same thing, as everyone else.

What happens when we get to a point where the computers can compose our emails better and faster than we can, using the same limited collection of worn-out phrases? Maybe it’s just a clear indication of how most of our communications are ritualistic formalism.

But Google is already suggesting replies to emails we receive, and now there’s a good chance that most of that email that just showed up in our inbox was in fact composed by Google. In this way, Google is just talking to itself, giving us a few options to chose from, and then doing most of the work for us to dress our simple, repetitive thoughts up into nice, polite language. Thanks, Google, for saving me the pain of conscious thought.

Or, I should say:

“Thanks, Google!”

Road Warrior kit v.2018

I’m trying out a new road warrior setup: I’ve got a little Samsung Tab E tablet, with a 4G cell modem, which I paired up with my Logitech K480 Bluetooth keyboard.

The keyboard has a handly little knob that I can use to quickly select up to three different Bluetooth devices. Right now, I’m just using slots 1 and 2 for my iPhone 6S Plus and my Tab E.

I’m using the Tab E instead of my refurbished Lenovo X201, which runs the latest version of Ubuntu. That computer is a favorite, because it’s small and easy to upgrade, compared to (say) a MacBook Pro. But, it doesn’t have a cellular modem built in.

I’m going to see how much productive work I can get done with this setup. Since my main productive activity is writing, and I’m doing that right now on this Logitech ‘board, I’m happy with that.

To publish or edit posts on my WordPress blogs, I can use the WordPress.com app, which is OK. I prefer the desktop browser interface.

I suppose I could use the desktop version of the WordPress admin screens on the tablet, but I don’t have very much screen real estate, even compared to the relatively tiny screen on the Lenovo.

Here are the biggest advantages to this setup:

• Because both the tablet and the iPhone are connected to my cell network, I don’t need WiFi (but I can use it if I want).
• I can power both my devices with my huge external USB battery pack if my device batteries run low, so I don’t need a wall socket if the batteries run down.
• If I do have access to a wall socket, I can charge the battery pack and then use the battery pack to charge my tablet and phone.
• The tablet and the keyboard are lighter than a notebook computer.

Here’s what I can’t do:

• Any kind of WordPress development, including basic CSS work, is really out of the question.
• Photo editing: I can use online tools, Instagram or Skitch to edit photos, but that means simple stuff, like cropping and applying filters, nothing fancy.
• I can’t really do any media editing, like editing video or audio. I’d want to do that stuff with macOS or Ubuntu, with a dual-screen setup back at the office.

But, I can write and listen to music and update my blogs. I can answer emails and check Google Analytics. I can do what I need to do.

I’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I’ve been publishing every day. Monday, I posted Publish every day to send a flood of traffic to your site on my company blog. Plus I posted How to write 3,000 words every day here on the Stratopress. And then, yesterday, I posted Bone broth bounty to my new health blog, Bye Bye Blubber. As you can tell, I have a weakness for alliteration. Whatever gets me to 3,000 words!

How to write 3,000 words every day

If you are a writer or a content creator, you need to write. This is the only way to improve, to hone your craft. The more you write, the better you’ll be at writing. It’s like any other skill: you must practice to improve. And the best way to improve your writing? Make it a daily habit.

In his post, Write 3000 words every day, even when you don’t feel like it, Mars Dorian says:

The idea is to purposefully chunk your workload into tiny units which you can easily accomplish every day. So in the beginning, instead of writing 3,000 words a day and then slacking off for days, you only write a few hundred words within 24 hours but make sure it becomes a daily habit.

How did he establish the habit of writing?

1. The amount and quality of what you write every day has nothing to do with talent. Mars started out as “a terrible writer.” But he kept at it, wrote every day, and now he makes most of his income through writing. “And if I can do it, you can do it … and you can do it even better,” he concludes.
2. Use the power of Kaizen, or improvement in tiny steps, to improve your writing (and the amount you write each day). By increasing the amount he wrote every day by 50 – 100 words each month, “I started writing only 200 words a day in 2010 and upgraded to about 3,000 words a day within five years.”
3. Go back to basics to battle inertia. He explains, “falling back to the basics will always ensure you can write on auto-pilot because you OWN the fundamentals.” Read on for the basics of good writing.
4. Gamify your writing: Measure how much you write every day, and keep track of it. I personally use the web-based 750words. com, to track my writing and streaks. Mars prefers Scrivener (Mac, Windows, and iOS).

What are the basics of good writing?

Mars lists his basic rules of good writing:

• The rule of one: one page, one call to action; one post, one lesson; one paragraph, one message; one sentence, one idea.
• For marketing, use the AIDA principle: “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.”
• Make it readable: target a 9th grade reading level (freshman in high school).
• The active voice should be used instead of the passive. Just kidding! Use the active voice over the passive voice.
• Use a few strong nouns and verbs instead of a lot of weak adjective and adverbs.

Good advice! Mars recommends some further reading to learn the fundamentals of effective writing:

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne.

I’d also recommend the slender but essential The Elements of Style (Wikipedia)

Did it work for me?

Mars’ post struck a chord with me. I’ve worked for years on developing the daily habit of writing. The hard part, though, is publishing your writing. Mars doesn’t discuss this in his post, but the principles are the same:

• Practice publishing every day: it’s great to develop the habit of daily writing, but you need to put your writing out there. Find a way to publish every day, and do it. Start with a blogging service like WordPress.com or Medium. Or, you can answer questions on Quora.com. Your writing will improve even faster if other people read what you write, and even better, give you feedback.
• Start small, and increase the amount you publish every month. If you just post one tweet a day, you’re getting your writing out there. After you’ve established the daily habit of tweeting, or publishing a short post to your new blog, keep at it for a month. Then, increase the length of your posts, or the number of posts or tweets you post every day.
• Edit your drafts before you publish to improve: if you are going to build your audience, you need to publish quality material. Make editing part of your publishing process. Develop a checklist to ensure your writing is tight, clear, accessible, and entertaining.
• Gamify your publishing: in addition to tracking the amount of material you publish, track how many views or shares you get over time. Learn how to use Google Analytics or WordPress stats to learn how people find your writing, and what interests them. Learn how to read the stats on your social media posts.

In addition to these principles, follow these tips to make publishing easier and your published work better:

• Own your work: social media sites are a great way to reach your audience, but everything you post on those sites is the property of the company that runs the site. instead of donating your work for free to these hugely profitable companies, start your own blog to store your posts and articles, and use social media to promote and link to your blog, instead of only posting your work to the social media service.
• Get involved in online communities focused on topics that interest you. This is a great way to find an audience, and learn what people are interested in reading. Post on Reddit, answer questions on Quora, or find a specialized website or message board that discusses topics that interest you. When you write about what you’re interested in, your writing will automatically be better. When you can help someone else with your writing, that’s even better. Plus, you can get feedback right away from the other members of your online community.
• Understand that criticism is a form of attention: if someone posts something critical about one of your posts, it means that they took the time to read it and even had an opinion about what your wrote. Maybe their opinion wasn’t nice, or what they wrote was cruel or stupid, but they paid attention to your writing. In fact, if you are writing well, you will certainly upset someone. If your writing is bland and indecisive, you won’t offend anyone, but no one is going to read it, either. Take a stand, express an opinion, articulate your passionate beliefs. Your writing will be much better. But you have to accept that you will never ever please everyone.
• Don’t waste your time on pointless online discussions: instead of spending hours a day replying to tweets or Facebook posts, carve out time to write, without interruption, on the topics that matter to you. This is your body of work: posts, articles and books that you wrote, not a collection of tweets and Facebook rage posts. If someone replies or comments on your post, take your time with your response. Don’t write back angrily or defensively. Remember that they took the time to read what you wrote. Express gratitude to your audience. Or, better yet, start your own blog so you can decide which comments you want to show up under your posts.
• Give yourself credit (and even a reward) for putting yourself out there: most people don’t take the step to click that Publish button. If you did, congratulate yourself. If you do it every day, that’s even better. If you make money from your writing, be sure to buy yourself a treat every now and then, when you reach your goal (book sales, downloads, increased sales, whatever you use to measure your success).

I’m still learning how to be a better writer, and how to publish more, better work. What have you learned as you write and publish online? Post your comments below!

Read more of my writing on my company’s blog at Cadent.com, for more on getting the most out of WordPress and your online marketing efforts. If you liked this post, you might also enjoy my recent post on Cadent.com, Publish every day to send a flood of traffic to your site.

Publish or perish, part 2

Last November, I posted Publish or Perish, where I promised to try to write and share, or publish, new blog posts more consistently. It seemed like this experiment was an abject failure.

I updated Publish or Perish this March when I learned how to increase my publishing rate by writing on Quora.com. But I still wasn’t publishing new material nearly as often as I hoped.

Even though I consistently write every day, at least 750 words or more, I was having trouble publishing posts with any kind of consistency. Now, finally, I’m publishing something almost every day.

What’s the difference?

I think the biggest change is adding a focused project that I’m really excited about — this makes writing easy.

I want to share what I’ve learned. I want to share my successes, and also my failures. This approach I stumbled on demonstrates a great way to start a blog: pick a topic that interests you, and then learn everything you can about that topic.

As part of the learning process, write about what you’ve learned. This approach has a number of benefits:

• Your writing is better because you’re writing about a topic that interests you.
• Writing about something you’ve learned is an excellent way to consolidate your newly acquired knowledge.
• If you write about something that you’ve just learned, in a way that other people can understand, it will increase your retention and overall understanding.
• You might help other people out.
• You’ll build a blog with lots of content.
• You may even attract an audience.

You can’t capture an audience’s attention unless you have something to share with them.

That’s why writing deeply about something you care about and enjoy learning more about is such a rich and rewarding source of new ideas and strong writing.

Right now, no one is visiting my new blog, because it just went live this week. I’ve got about 16 posts and a few pages up already. I’m still tweaking it, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. You can check it out here: Bye Bye Blubber – First, focus on health. Then burning blubber is easy.

How did I launch my new blog?

I built my new blog in WordPress with the TwentySeventeen theme. I found a lot of great photos on Unsplash and by using CC Search.

I’m pleased with the way it turned out. Take a look and let me know what you think!

I haven’t done anything to drive traffic yet, but I’ll start working on that soon. In the meantime, I can publish stuff to my new blog and not get too fussy about it, because honestly no one is going to read it right now. I’ve got time to review and edit my work.

Although, I did get my first spam comment today. That’s a milestone!

Why publishing every day is hard

Not having to worry about actual readers makes it easier to publish.

I also found the exact opposite. In the update I added to Publish or perish, I talked about how answering questions on Quora helped me get over my reluctance to publish.

The reason was simple: I was answering specific questions for real people. I then figured out that I could collect these answers and publish them on my blog.

The main reason that publishing on the regular is so hard is because I find writing easy, but editing hard.

I don’t worry too much about my edits now, though. I read through to make sure I don’t have any major grammatical errors, I’ll break up run-on sentences (a major issue for me) and keep my grafs short.

I’ve also gotten better at accepting that my posts aren’t going to be perfect, not ever. The only way to get better at publishing posts is to publish posts.

This means I’m going to publish some stuff that isn’t that amazing. But it’s the only way to improve: practice and more practice. Plus, when I publish what I write, I open the possibility that I might get some feedback from real people.

In addition to edits, good blog posts have photos and graphics. I’m getting better at finding Creative Commons licensed photos with CC Search or Unsplash. I always, always credit the artist. But it takes time, even though it improves readership.

It’s really that second (and maybe third or fourth pass) at a post that makes publishing so difficult. But, I’m building the habit, learning to get it done. The more I publish, the easier it gets. Let’s see if that turns into traffic and readers.

Publish or perish

An experiment in establishing the habit of publishing regularly (5 days / week)

I’m writing plenty of words every day, at least 750 to be precise, at 750words.com. You can see from my stats page that I’m cranking it out: 418 days in a row, as of today, and over a million words since I started. But, I wasn’t really publishing very much, since everything on 750words.com is private. I did write some stuff for my company blog at Cadent.com, but that wasn’t happening with any consistency either. I wrote a few odds and ends here and there that went up on my other blogs.

I want to get in the habit of publishing on a regular basis. What does that mean? “Publish” can mean a lot. What counts as publishing? How many words? How often? Where do I publish? Does social media count?

So I answered the question like this:

• I’m going to publish at least 100 words at least five days per week.
• I’m going to publish on Cadent.com at least three of those days each week.
• Published material is available to the public (no limits to access, so Facebook updates just my friends doesn’t count, for example).
• Articles and posts are fully edited, and incorporate all required graphics and media. Drafts don’t count either.
• I can schedule publication dates in the future if I have a backlog of articles ready to go.

Those are the rules. I’m also going to set up automatic notifications for each of my publishing platforms so updates and links go out to all my followers, as appropriate. So far I’ve linked my LinkedIn and Twitter account to Cadent.com via Jetpack.

I started doing this on Sunday, November 12, so today is the fourth day in a row. I’ll check in regularly with any news and at the end of the month I’m going to look at my traffic, compared to right now. I’ll post the results mid-December and then decide if I’m going to change the rules or stop doing this.

This post here fulfills today’s requirement, although I worked on a number of other posts today as well. I wasn’t able to get any of them ready for publication, though, so I just banged this out.

Here’s what I think will happen (these are my hypotheses):

• I’ll get more traffic to at least some of my sites, ideally Cadent.com.
• I’ll get much better at publishing things on the Internet.
• I’ll learn how to publicize what I publish and how to automate that process.
• I’ll get better at writing.
• I’ll clarify some other goals I have for my online businesses.
• I’ll learn which publishing tools work best. Right now I’m focused on using WordPress, but I’ll use other tools, like Blogger.com, if needed.

So, those are my six hypotheses. I’ll see what happens after 30 days, and post the results by December 15th, 2017. Stay tuned, and your comments are always appreciated!

Update: March 21, 2018

Well, I didn’t update this after 30 days had passed, as I hoped. It turns out that publishing stuff is hard. I still write every day: as of today, I’ve written at least 750 words for 544 days in a row, or 126 days since I first posted this article. So that doesn’t suck.

I’ve also published quite a bit, just not as much as I planned. I’ve posted a number of long-ish articles (eight articles since I first posted this) to Quora.com — view all of my answers here. As a result, I’ve become one of the Most Viewed Writers in Learning to Play Musical Instruments — I’m number 7 today, and interestingly enough, I have the highest views to answers ratio. I’ve only posted 8 answers, and I’ve got over 6,000 views, while the others in the top 10 have posted more articles (almost 100, for some) for roughly the same number of views. I don’t know what that means, but it’s interesting. My answers tend to run long, maybe that has something to do with it. I’ve also made the top 10 for:

• Learning to Play Guitar — #2
• Guitar Lessons – #6

My Quora Readership stats for the last 3 months shows the results of publishing at a ridiculously minimal rate

So that’s cool! People are reading my stuff. Another interesting tidbit: one of my best performing Quora answers is something I posted almost 3 years ago (What are the human benefits of learning to play guitar?), with almost 18,000 views and 62 upvotes. I know this is small change for Quora, but the point is this: by posting consistently on topics I enjoy and know well, I get recommendations from Quora for readers to read my back catalog, a virtuous circle of publishing and reading.

I like how Quora has a built-in audience. It’s not like my various web sites and blogs that get a fraction of the views that my better Quora answers get. I also like that I’m responding to specific questions, and sometimes I even get some feedback (often positive) from the people who posted the questions or read my answers. I find that’s really motivating!

I’ve been saving up all my Quora answers in a Google Doc and by now I’ve got enough material to launch a website devoted to learning guitar, a topic I enjoy. I’ve also demonstrated that I can write about it in a way that other people at least find useful, and may even enjoy.

Finally, my daily writing habit sure makes it easy to bang out a Quora answer. Writing every day makes my writing better, and it also flows more easily. So maybe for most of those 126 days I’ve written since I first posted this, I’ve written disorganized garbage, but every now and then I’ll nail it and crank out a good article in short order.

What I Learned

So, here’s what I’ve learned from my experiment in regular writing and posting:

• If you want to get better at something, practice, ideally every day.
• Build on your good habits. I may write every day, but I don’t publish every day, because that involves editing and finding graphics and other things besides writing. But, I have to write before I can publish! So I’ve got the first step nailed. Now I just have to maintain that first habit, and then add another habit of publishing on the regular on top of the writing.
• If you want to do something every day, set a daily goal that’s relatively easy. I can bang out 750 words in less than 20 minutes, especially if I don’t have to worry about the quality! My publishing goals (above, 5x/week) were just too ambitious for me, although they might work just fine for you. Now that I’ve tried this, I’ve decided to publish just once a week, instead of five times a week. I can do that!
• Put yourself out there. By publishing on Quora, I’m getting lots of feedback and encouragement, even though I don’t publish very frequently. Also, once something is out there, you never know when it might go viral. None of that happens unless I hit that [Publish] button.
• Write about what you know and what you love. This is almost a cliché, but it certainly makes writing more enjoyable. I think it improves the quality of my writing too. The articles that perform the best for me are on topics that really excite or interest me. Coincidence?  I think not.
• Measure what you do and reflect on it. Even though my experiment “failed,” because I didn’t publish as much as I hoped, I learned so much. Writing this update is part of that process. I didn’t realize how well I was doing on Quora until I looked at my stats for this article.
• Publishing is harder than writing, but it’s a habit that you can cultivate. It’s easy for me to write every day. But to put my work out into the world where people can criticize it, that’s hard. Also, I need to take time to edit, which is harder than just writing. But, like the writing itself, publishing regularly is a habit I can build and develop.
• Something is better than nothing. If I hadn’t set this ambitious goal for publishing five times a week, I probably wouldn’t have published as much as I did. I wouldn’t have learned so much about Quora, and I wouldn’t have published this either. Now I’m going to pursue an easier habit, just publish once a week, and see how that goes. Even publishing something to Quora every 2-3 weeks, instead of every 5 days, as I planned, had a huge effect: I’m a better writer and I’ve got literally thousands of readers who never would have read a single word if I hadn’t published anything.

Post a comment below if you have any questions or if you’ve tried something similar. Thanks for reading!

Black Ice is coming to town

Max and I came up with this on the way to school, and sang it for his class.

Chorus:

You better not slip,
you better not slide,
you better be careful
when you’re going outside
because
Black ice is coming to town

Verse:

You’ll slip when you are walking
You’ll skid when you go drive,
when you get to where you’re going
you’ll be glad that you’re alive.

(Repeat chorus)

Be careful out there!

Battle of the Blogs II: WordPress

December 14, 2007 12:43 AM

I fired up WordPress and busted out a blog about my son’s school, a private blog which requires a free WordPress account for members to read & post comments (or administer?). I invited family only, about 5 members. Let’s see what the activity level is like for such a small, but involved audience.

WordPress was having some CSS issues a little while ago, but these display issues seem to be fixed. Also, I was only posting to the Stratopress. Now, I have another blog, which I should keep an eye on … can I send emails to notify when I’ve posted? Or an RSS feed from a private blog? That’s interesting…

So, I’m liking WordPress. Interestingly, I composed this post in MacJournal, offline. But MJ has fullscreen, and I can be truly offline. It works with Blogger.com, too … in both cases, I have to finish my formatting in the blog posting form.

Greenhouse Effect

I wrote this back in the early 90’s when I was walking to work every day. The rhythm of walking was quite conducive to composing metered verse. Plus, it was pretty boring to walk the same route each day. I wrote this over several days, and wrote it down after I had worked it all out. I was hoping to use it as song lyrics, but never got around to it.

It was a hot summer, and the signs of global warming were there, if you wanted to see them. Back then, it wasn’t called Global Warming. The warming of the atmosphere that results from excessive carbon dioxide is also known as the “Greenhouse Effect,” because the atmosphere retains heat like the windows of a greenhouse.

Green House Effect

Chorus
Couldn’t go outside cause it’s so hot
And the sun burnt a hole in the sky
I thought I was cool but I’m not
And let me tell you why:

GREEN HOUSE EFFECT

The sun’s so hot it’s cooking my brain
Just like an egg in a pan
I can’t think and I need a drink
How ‘bout some shade and a fan

There’s no relief from this brutal heat
And it just gets worse every year
Those experts say everything’s OK
And we’ve got nothing to fear

I thought they were right until the other night
When my street washed into the sea
Something about a polar melt
and crazy meteorology

You can’t hide from a rising tide
and temps to a hundred and three
We trashed the earth for all it’s worth
Only took one century.

Chorus

I thought technology would be the remedy
But it turned into the disease
Without our cars we wouldn’t turn into Mars
A planet without water and trees

The dinosaur lived for a million years
and died off suddenly
Now we’ve achieved our worst fears
Extinct from insanity.

Who needs to go outside anymore?
I’ve got my cable TV
I’ll turn on the home shopping store
And crank up the AC.

We can all live in caves of steel and glass
While the earth dies off in the glare
We’re safe inside the concrete mass
Let’s ignore this ecological scare

Chorus

As long as I can drive while I’m alive
To my job in the factory
Our industrial might will make everything right
Until we wash away in the sea.

— Monday, June 19, 1995, 3:15 PM