Day 7: Writing about writing - part 2
What am I going to write, and how will I write it?
A few days ago I was scrolling through my substack feed, and I came across this post:
It’s a series covering three steps to help form the writing habit. The three steps are:
Why you’re publishing: Setting goals for your publication
What you’re publishing: Formats, style, and templates
When to publish: Setting your schedule and building a habit to do the work
I completed step 1 already, which you can read about here. Today I am writing about step 2.
What am I publishing?
So today’s exercise is trying to help me figure out what it is that I’m publishing - what format or formats do I want to use, do I want to adopt a consistent style, can I turn these things into templates?
Thinking back to my very first post, I outlined some of the topics I wanted to cover:
Things that interest me relating to software quality and delivery practices
Career-oriented topics (imposter syndrome, mentorship, motivation)
Personal life-oriented topics (work/life balance, video games)
Subsequent posts in this series have already started to cover some software-related topics, and all the other topics are still of interest to me. The format I would describe some of my previous posts with is “stream-of-consciousness meets educational” - that is, the topics cover a lot of ground, mostly just whatever I feel like writing about, and sometimes it’s stuff I think others might be able to learn from.
I’m going to continue with this stream-of-consciousness meets educational format - it suits me well for this write in public every day challenge. The article I’m following today has some good suggestions for other formats that might be worth giving a try:
The links roundup: Share a number of out-links to notable reads, listens, and videos online. These can follow list formats or be written into prose.
The curated list: Play with themes and ideas, and share loose, related ends in a readable digest.
These are probably the two most relevant to me that I think I might try out. As well as these, I had a third idea around book recommendations or short essays on topics I find interesting in books I read.
A templated approach
Okay so I’ve got some established formats I want to use - can I template them at all? The article I’m following suggests a few ways to introduce a common presentation style:
Sometimes writers use the beginning of their title to name the format or series. It’s best to keep series or format titles to one or two words…
I have been using “Day X:” as the beginning of my post titles to have some continuity in my write in public every day series - I like it so far, and I’m going to keep it.
A standout image at the top of your post helps create intrigue and works with the headline to draw people in. This image also doubles as your social preview image that will display as the preview on your publication homepage and social media.
I’ve been using images in my post, even if I can’t find an image that is very clearly relevant to the subject of the post. I personally find big walls of text hard to concentrate on, and this goes especially for the more technical posts - so I’ll continue to break my writing up with images.
Use headings as markers to let readers know you are transitioning to a new part of the newsletter, or when a new idea or format is being introduced. Plus, you can use headers as scaffolding in drafts while you are creating the post.
I’m sort of already doing this. My use of headings is pretty ad-hoc. I think if I start using some more consistent formats like the ones I mentioned above, I can start having some consistency in the headings.
Every time you publish, it’s an opportunity for existing subscribers to share your work so new readers bump into it.
This one is pretty easy, and it would be good to increase the readership - it was one of my goals. Keep doing.
There are a few more ideas given in the article, but I think they apply more once I have at least established a bit of a pattern in my publication. Until then, I think these things are a good start.
So that’s part two of this “forming the habit” miniseries. I feel like the parameters of this publication are starting to become clearer to me. I’m hoping that doing all of this will help me narrow the scope of my writing a bit, and help me focus and actually get stuff published. We shall see.
The next part in this miniseries will be on when to publish, setting a schedule and building a habit to do the work.
As always, see you in the next one.