An increasingly furious blizzard of emails and articles informs me that I take much too long to produce an article. I should be cranking out articles by the truck load. 30 minutes, an hour max per article.
I have to call BS on the general notion.
Sure, there’s times (like right now) when I can snap out an article in a few minutes. You have noticed this capability yourself I’m sure. When everything just flows, right out of your fingers, into the keyboard, across the interwebs and onto your blog.
Nothing could be simpler.
But then… there’s other times…
Like the article I have gestating on a simple, portable, self-contained unit testing framework in pure C, with a version in C++ for comparison. I’ve got a few hours work in it already. But there’s no way it’s close to being done!
Sure, big hunks of the article have been written, but the important part, the code, still needs to be integrated into the article. The tested code, an algorithm for determining line intersections, needs to be verified manually as well. Unit testing only assures you get (or don’t get) the answer you’re looking for. You still have to ensure the answer you’re testing for is correct. That’s not a huge burden, but is a few hours of paper and pencil geometry and arithmetic.
Cripes, just making sure the Makefile works the way I want it to will take an hour of focus.
This unit testing article will get traffic, just as all my other articles on C programming get the majority of traffic on There Is NO Box. In contrast, these rapidly written article on motivation, inspiration and productivity get almost no traffic at all (I reread them though, they’re very useful for me, which is mostly why I write them).
The upshot of all these assertions about cutting one’s writing time by huge percentages is this:
- If you are writing from a purely emotional basis where facts are irrelevant, or not important, or at the least disputable (for example, my assertions above), yes, it’s possible to snap out articles as fast as your little hippocampus or amygdyla or whatever can drive your fingers.
- If instead, your articles have to be factually correct… the first time you have to look something up either on line… you’re in for an hour. At least. The more verifiable facts, the longer it will take the article.
Ten minutes in and pressing the “Publish” button.
That is all.
