I Now Write a Daily Blog
You can find it at nik.art
Why am I doing it? It’s both a short-term problem fix and a long-term change in strategy.
Writing a book is a descent into chaos. For months, you’ll stew in your own broth, re-writing the same lines over and over, until you can no longer see the forest for the trees.
For most of my career, I used to post every day, be it on Medium, Quora, Four Minute Books, or somewhere else. When you can’t ship your main project for months, a daily blog is a nice way to get out of your own head. It is the antidote to the perfection pills you must take to write a good book.
At the same time, daily blogging helps you get going. It’s your workout before the main run. No matter what happens in the big leagues, at least you showed up for practice. Practicing every day is easier than doing it five days a week. If you never stop, you’ll never have to start again, which is the hardest part.
While your readers wait for your book, they’d like to hear from you. It’s easy to buy someone’s latest title if you’re talking to them every day — or at least on occasion. If someone shows up at your door after a year, saying, “Hey, wanna buy this?” that’s a different dynamic. Best of all, if people like your blog, they might share it. Free marketing! You might even sell a few extra books.
Finally, it’s about ownership. It’s been seven years. It’s time to go home. I like the Medium neighborhood. I enjoy hanging in Quora’s suburb. At the end of the day, however, my blog is my house. My digital corner of the world. Home. And where better to practice than in the comfort of one’s home?
For a more artistic explanation, you can read these three posts in order:
To reflect the change, I’ve made myself (and hopefully you too) a bit more comfortable in my home. Here’s what the blog looks like now:
What’s new?
- Home page = blog page. Arrive and start reading. No fluff.
- Full post previews. You can keep scrolling down and read more without having to click into each post. Infinite scroll to follow.
- Next/Last buttons. Conveniently jump from post to post after clicking into any specific one.
- Random button. In the middle of the menu, there’s a “Random” item. You can click this on any page and be sent to a random post. I’ll make this an in-post button sometime, but for now, this should do.
- Sharing buttons. If you’ve clicked into a post and are done reading it, you’ll find the option to share it where it belongs: at the bottom.
- Highlight sharing. If you highlight any section of the text, buttons will appear, allowing you to share the highlight or simply copy it to your clipboard for your own use.
- Disappearing forms. If you opt in to the newsletter (daily feed of new posts or infrequent updates), the form at the bottom of each post should disappear, making for a smoother reading experience.
Is this the last iteration? Absolutely not. But it’s good enough to start. With any luck, there’ll be a lot more over the next few months and years. I’ll slowly add my entire portfolio of over 1,000 posts across various platforms. They too should all be home, back in one convenient spot.
I’ll post a “best of the blog” series on Medium sometime, both to show you what it’s like and remind you a few times of the new destination. I’ll still post longer pieces on Medium as usual, but those don’t happen as much while I’m writing books. Hence, something to snack on in the meantime.
Thank you for being a part of my journey. I’ll do my best to earn a place in yours.
— Nik
