10 years of writing a blog nobody reads

Summary

In November 2015, I started a blog on Blogger. My first post was a book review of The Martian by Andy Weir. 10 years and a couple of blog migrations later, I'm still writing. I wanted to share some thoughts and learnings I picked up throughout this time. Some of it is specific to writing a blog, but some is generally applicable to writing in any format. goodnight sweet prince writing well One of the main reasons I maintain this blog is to become a better writer. I really appreciate when someone's writing feels effortless. Whether it's in a book, an article, or even a technical document—communicating effectively is a fine art. I'm not there yet, but I enjoy the process of improving. My style has certainly improved since my early days of writing. Reading my old stuff is painful. I would use too many qualifiers and verbose phrases. It was a direct translation of the way I spoke, which turns out is a bad strategy for how you should write. If your goal is to have other people read—and hopefully enjoy—your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts. Here's a sample of the useless phrases I would add to the start or end of almost every sentence: I think... I feel... I believe... To me,... It feels like... It seems that... In my opinion... This was my worst habit when I started. It's just fluff that makes it exhausting to read. It's redundant to say "I think" at any point in an opinion piece. keep all that pondering to yourself buddy Using this "careful" language just softens your ideas to the point of being inarguable. If you start a sentence with "I feel..." then no one can dispute anything that follows, since it's just your feeling. This is boring to read. Writing a blog, or anything really, is your contribution to public discourse. Sure, this blog only averages 10 page views a week (9 are bots and 1 is me) but I'm still throwing my ideas out there into the digital ether. If you're publishing something on the internet, you might as well stand tall behind yo...