Rhoneisms

There is something I have noticed the past few days that mirrors my own experience. Successful online writing is almost always measured in years. Sure, there is the rare overnight success. But, for the most part, if there is an online writer that you respect or whose name is recognizable in the circles in which you read, it is likely they have been at it for many years. Some examples…
In his wonderful, and I would argue essential, recent post — Designing blogs for readers — by Matt Gemmell, he mentions that he has been blogging for eleven years.
John Gruber, in mentioning his latest round of T-shirts for sale, mentions that he has been writing Daring Fireball full time for seven years. He has been writing online far longer than that.
Jason Kottke has been writing at kottke.org for fifteen years. But I started reading him online well before that, when he lived here in the Twin Cities and wrote a blog called Oscill8.
And, of course, the first post on this site is November, 7 2003 (going on ten years). But the blog had been one internal to my employer at the time for about a year before that.
My point being this, I get a lot of people who are relatively new to online writing asking me what it takes to be successful at it. I think one of the main things is simply showing up and doing it for a long time. Not only are you bound to get better at it from such constant long term practice, but audiences are built reader by reader over the long term as well.
This was just as true of all of the writers mentioned above. They all started with a single post and just kept showing up year after year. If you would like similar success, that is the place to start.
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I don’t do a whole lot of self-promotion here. Largely because I think there are more interesting things to talk about than “me,me,me, sell, sell, sell” all the time. But a recent post about buying the books of your favorite bloggers by Seth Godin really resonated with me. Particularly this:

There are authors and actors who only show up when they have something to sell, who hit the road to briefly entertain us, pitch us and then leave. If you love their work, then by all means, buy it! But the frequent blogger is here for another reason. He or she has something to share and is relentlessly showing up to teach and lead and connect.
If you want that to happen more, if you’re getting something out of it, buy the book.

The majority of my income comes from my writing. My books are a key source of that. Purchasing my books is a direct way to support and insure the work I do here.
Toward that goal, I have recently cleaned up the book page and added all four of the books I have written to date. Please take a look
Perhaps you have purchased one or two but have not purchased the others. First of all, thank you so much. Secondly, please consider buying another if the subject interests you or you wish to simply support the work I do here. If you enjoy the work I do here (almost) daily, I’m sure you will find the value your receive from any of them is at least equal to the amount you give.
But, regardless of whether you buy my books or not, I can tell you there are a lot of great writers posting to their blogs regularly that would benefit from the same kind of support. If they have a book for sale, buy it.

I did not go looking for a notation system that worked for me. Instead my dash/plus system was simply an extension of something I was already doing. For as long as I can remember, I had been in taking notes in a outline-like style, with a dash proceeding each point. Therefore, since I was already in the habit of doing this, extending the functionality of that dash seemed the most simple and natural thing for me.
Also, for as long as I can remember, I have been making lists of what I needed to do on paper and placing it to the right of my workspace. I remember doing this as early as using such a list to enumerate my homework for the evening in high school (perhaps the preceding dash started here too). Eventually, I moved to doing this at work and for my tasks at home. Thus, my today card was born.
My point being that we are often quick to look outside ourselves for the answer to finding a trusted system that keeps us on track and drives our day. And, while one can certainly adopt ideas and make them one’s own, I would argue that the first, easiest, and most trusted of places to look might be an extension of something we already do. Something that can evolve and grow as we do.
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I’ve been struggling lately. It’s not a depression per se. I know what that is. I’m not sure what this is. A low level malaise, perhaps. But not quite.
It basically is this, no matter how much I get done over the course of a day, no matter how productive I am, I still feel like I’ve gotten nothing done, am way behind, am dropping balls, and have no hope of catching up. And, like all such dark visitors, it has the effective self-fulfilling results of actually getting nothing done that I want to get done (despite my getting plenty done otherwise).
I write a lot but not what I wish I was writing. I check tasks off the list but not what I feel I should be checking. I get to the end of the day, look around, and can actually see my accomplishments, but all I can focus on is that which I did not.
I’ve taken to logging all of the things I do into Day One. I already am capturing and logging much of my online work and travels as well, thanks to Slogger. My hope was that it would provide an even better picture of what I’m up to. A lens of credibility and truth that would fight back and prove my feelings a lie.
Thus far, it’s not working. And I don’t have a Plan B.