Years ago, while reading a blog post by Lilian Chan a.k.a. 5xmom, she mentioned almost at the end of her post about how she could create a blog post of approximately 700 words in just 15 minutes. At first I mentally shrugged and thought, sure, I can do that, *duh*. After giving it a second thought, and thinking back at all the times I spent in front of the computer trying to finish a blog post, I realized that doing so wasn’t as easy as I initially thought.
For a while afterwards, I started timing myself to see just how much time I actually spent as I worked on writing each post in my blog.
Approximately ONE HOUR PER POST! For a mere 500 words?! DARN! And I thought I was just easily spilling words out like vomit!
The knowledge that I was a “slow” blogger kind of gotten stuck in my head together with 5xmom’s brag about her skills, and those thoughts kept popping in my head for years up till now.
Loads of questions were running through my mind — why am I bothered by that fact?.. why do I blog so slow?.. why do I have to spend so much time on a blog post?.. why can’t I just blurt out what’s in my head?.. how do I make my blogging faster? My brain has these questions in loop every time I was self-aware of my blogging skills.
It bothers me that I’m even bothered about this issue. So why am I so bothered?
Right now I am sitting alone in the darkness of my living room past midnight, with the rest of my family fast asleep, so I guess since no one is currently bothering me, I have all the time, thoughts and energy to myself to answer these bugging questions.
So MAYBE my ego was a little bruised by the speed in which I blog. Words were suppose to flow naturally out of me, like spring water out of a… blergh.
Perasan. That’s a Malay word for “you are so full of yourself.”
I tend to rethink things in my head, going over the details, making sure that not only are my words concise, blunt in a less obnoxious way, funny in a sarcastic way, gets a bit of wordplay once in a while, but the words also have to be accurate and, most importantly, help me sound smarter that the average jane. I’m just very fussy this way. There’s a reason why my blog ranks well in Google and gets a PageRank of 4, you know? SEO doesn’t just happen in my blog. I planned it in such a way so that the quality of my blog posts just has to be at par with my expectations.
I probably won’t be able to blog faster anytime soon, without compromising the quality of my posts, especially when juggling kids, work, home and other past-time stuff. Life is that crazy right now.
Which are you — a speed-blogger, or a leisurely blogger?
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