Note 336 – The 7 advantages and 7 disadvantages of daily blogging

11 months down, 1 to go! With just 30 days to go on my 366 day Writing Challenge, I am pleased to say that it’s been an enjoyable experience, but also very time-consuming. Blogging every day (in addition to a day job) without a break can be exhausting some days and it’s not something I’m going to try again without thinking it through fully. My main aim was to be a better writer after one year (and I definitely feel more confident about writing for others now and not just for me); however, sometimes I think that I could have possibly found an easier way to do this. I don’t regret it one little bit though (what’s a year of your life when you are learning something you are passionate about?) and I always believe that there’s a reason for everything.

Writing this post made me think about how many other people commit themselves to daily blogging and how a list of advantages and disadvantages might be beneficial to someone about to embark on a writing challenge (or any challenge for that matter, just adapt the list accordingly).

So, here are my two lists – I hope they are useful to you…

7 Advantages of this Daily Writing Challenge

1. Learning – It’s forcing me to research and learn something new every day and I’ve learnt loads in a short space of time.
2. Practising – It’s encouraging me to practise writing and teaching, and also allowing me lots of opportunities to use my presentation skills in making the blog posts concise and easy to follow.
3. Connecting/Networking – It’s giving me the opportunity to connect with more people every day, building up followers from all around the world and getting recognition and positive feedback.
4. Preparing – Even though there is the pressure of posting every day, I’ve more recently made a few draft entries, as well as titles of posts, as a prompt for the days when I am ‘not so inspired’.
5. Building – I’ve been able to build up examples of my writing quicker.
6. Attracting – I’ve hopefully given myself more opportunities to get my writing noticed by others. It’s quite exciting not knowing where the dedication and commitment is going to lead.
7. Time Management – I’m improving my time management skills by having to get something done quickly and sticking to tight deadlines day after day.

7 Disadvantages of this Daily Writing Challenge

1. No break – there are no breaks, not even for a day. Even when I haven’t felt so good, I’ve had to drag myself to the computer to type something; however, I once typed: Note 175 – Is it okay to not feel like writing some days?.
2. Feeling rushed – I sometimes feel rushed to finish the post and would have loved some more time to edit and review it properly. Any good intentions of reading it back the following day, gets replaced with thoughts of the next day’s post. I feel that some day’s posts might have read better if I had allowed myself the luxury of more time to write and edit it.
3. Chore v passion – when faced with a midnight deadline and feeling tired from a long day, it can sometimes turn that day’s post into a chore rather than a passion.
4. Battling tiredness – It doesn’t matter how organised I have been over the last 11 months, I have nearly always found myself finalising the post in the evening. Not ideal when tired. Even after learning the writing tip, I still have to be able to explain it and type something meaningful.
5. Prioritising – Even though I may have had other important priorities for a particular day, I could never bring myself to miss a day of my challenge (or sometimes I just did both and got less sleep – not ideal!).
6. Days off/holidays – Although I haven’t had a holiday during this challenge (ahhh), it might have been a bit tricky to prepare a post every day if I had.
7. Writing/family balance – My family will always come before my writing, but with my passion for writing being so strong, I am still committed to completing this blog every night after everyone has gone to bed. This is usually at the time when my instinct is telling me that I should be in bed too! At times the writing/family balance felt a little out of balance.

That’s all for today. If anyone has a comment on the subject of daily blogging or any other types of challenges (writing or similar), I would love to hear from you.

Catch up with you tomorrow for the final month of my challenge…

Sandra
www.sandramadeira.com

Related articles

• Note 289 – My Writing Challenge Progress (mywritingnotebook.com)
• Note 321 – Learning and then teaching via your blog (mywritingnotebook.com)
• Note 266 – Measuring writing progress in 8 different ways (mywritingnotebook.com)