It’s time to say “Fare Thee Well” to another NaBloPoMo, and this time I made it. Woo-hoo!
Looking back at a month’s worth of entries, I think a lot of them are, well… just not very good. Pretty much every night I ran up against the deadline, and often I published a preliminary version of the piece only to finish after midnight. Even with this time extension most nights, the writing just isn’t very good. They seem rushed, as indeed they were.
Having a deadline does force more production, and real writers will often tell you that it’s important just to write every day — just get some words down on paper. I can see where there’s value in that, but I think that Brian Dunning at Skeptoid has a more insightful and useful guideline. Dunning has taken Skeptoid from scratch to a popular podcast (roughly 100K downloads a week), lecture series, books, a video podcast, and is working on getting a version of the show on PBS, all in about four years. That’s fantastic, and when he released Skeptoid episode 200 in April 2010, he revealed the secret.
To make all of this happen, my alarm clock goes off at 5:30 in the morning, every weekday, every week, every month, for three and a half years so far. Yes, it’s a big commitment and one that I take very seriously. It’s fun, but it can’t be treated like a hobby. I treat it like a business. I follow a strict schedule, and it’s the first thing I block off on my calendar — before work, before play. A hobby, by definition, is something that you fool around with in your spare time. It’s not managed. My commitment to my listeners is that Skeptoid is not a hobby. That’s why you expect, and receive, a new episode every single week at 7:00 AM Pacific time every Tuesday morning — without fail. And that dependability I think is one reason why people respond the way they do.
Someday, I hope to develop the kind of commitment to this blog, or some other writing venue, that Dunning brings to Skeptoid. That I haven’t done it so far, is the reason why this blog has readers numbering in the low single digits.
