I completed my 20-article challenge ! Yay !! I am not surprised I completed it, but I am surprised I stuck to the original schedule. With 3 Sundays marked as 'rest' days, I completed the challenge in 23 days :) 'Not bad', even if I say so myself ;)
Some of these articles suck, some are decent, and I am happy with the rest. All the worthwhile ones ( some cant be fixed even by editing :) will need some editing. which brings me to a painful realization.
One of the bad habits I have developed over the course of writing posts on this blog is that my general approach has been to open up the editor, and start typing out the posts. Very few of the posts here are pre-thought out in detail. Most are spontaneously written. I dont mind that, since the purpose of this blog was for it to be random. I do not expect the posts I put out to be polished or perfect. But, the downside of this approach has become clearer to me now - I am terrible at editing. Spectacularly incompetent at it. Once I approach the end of an article/post , and I find that it's turning out to be significantly worse than I had imagined, it is very difficult for me to 'fix it'. I welcome tips to deal with this challenge :)
Now, let me ramble a bit about the origins of this challenge - On Jan 1 , 2019, I created a word doc called 25_blog_posts. (I developed this odd habit of using too many underscores in the filenames during my undergrad years.) I would update this doc sporadically. Sometime last month, I opened up this doc again, and had a brilliant idea ;) The idea of counting how many posts the doc contained. 8 it was. At the end of 17 months, I had 8 posts. It's funny how time flies, but words dont. Anyway, I can forgive myself for that since, last year was really busy with our son. But our schedules are a lot easier now, and I decided to take up the challenge.
The reason I did not post the articles here - To cut a long story short, I am planning to close down this blog sometime this year. No, no tragedies have occurred ;) I shall explain later.
Over 20,000 words written. 45 minutes a day. I am pleased with my progress. I have also been lucky, as no catastrophes occurred in the past few weeks which would have potentially derailed the writing.
I remember reading somewhere about the idea of living life as a series of 30-day challenges. I dismissed it then as impractical. Now, I am somewhat less dismissive about the idea :)
Some of these articles suck, some are decent, and I am happy with the rest. All the worthwhile ones ( some cant be fixed even by editing :) will need some editing. which brings me to a painful realization.
One of the bad habits I have developed over the course of writing posts on this blog is that my general approach has been to open up the editor, and start typing out the posts. Very few of the posts here are pre-thought out in detail. Most are spontaneously written. I dont mind that, since the purpose of this blog was for it to be random. I do not expect the posts I put out to be polished or perfect. But, the downside of this approach has become clearer to me now - I am terrible at editing. Spectacularly incompetent at it. Once I approach the end of an article/post , and I find that it's turning out to be significantly worse than I had imagined, it is very difficult for me to 'fix it'. I welcome tips to deal with this challenge :)
Now, let me ramble a bit about the origins of this challenge - On Jan 1 , 2019, I created a word doc called 25_blog_posts. (I developed this odd habit of using too many underscores in the filenames during my undergrad years.) I would update this doc sporadically. Sometime last month, I opened up this doc again, and had a brilliant idea ;) The idea of counting how many posts the doc contained. 8 it was. At the end of 17 months, I had 8 posts. It's funny how time flies, but words dont. Anyway, I can forgive myself for that since, last year was really busy with our son. But our schedules are a lot easier now, and I decided to take up the challenge.
The reason I did not post the articles here - To cut a long story short, I am planning to close down this blog sometime this year. No, no tragedies have occurred ;) I shall explain later.
Over 20,000 words written. 45 minutes a day. I am pleased with my progress. I have also been lucky, as no catastrophes occurred in the past few weeks which would have potentially derailed the writing.
I remember reading somewhere about the idea of living life as a series of 30-day challenges. I dismissed it then as impractical. Now, I am somewhat less dismissive about the idea :)
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