In case you didn’t notice, I published four feature articles for Bloggasm last week, a personal record. It used to be that I felt lucky if I could post one feature article — and in this instance I’m using the word “feature” loosely to describe any post where I have to do original research, whether it’s conducting phone interviews with sources or analyzing data — a month. Lately I’ve been averaging two articles a week.
It has certainly taken its toll. If I want to write and publish an article it usually means staying up until two in the morning. And that’s not counting the time that it actually takes to conduct phone interviews and transcribe them (I use a digital voice recorder). I usually don’t get home from work until 6 p.m. and I typically set aside an hour or so to work out and eat dinner. After writing, editing and posting an article I then crawl into bed at two or three in the morning only to have to get up again four hours later.
Given that I can only work on the site during my nights and weekends I only really have time to write one post a day. Because of this I get the desire to make that one post count. But this odd thing has happened lately. On my days where I don’t plan on writing a feature article, when I just want to maybe throw up a quickie post with a small link or video, I find it harder to do so. For instance I came across a good post today written by another blogger, and while I probably should have just linked to the post I instead emailed him and asked him if I could interview him about it. My journalist brain took his post and created a whole theme around it. I started thinking of what other people I could interview for this article. Before you know it, a simple link has evolved into a 2,000+ word narrative journalism piece.
I’ve definitely been enjoying myself for the past two months with this increased feature article production. I just don’t know how much longer I can keep up the pace. How many times can I stay up until three in the morning before I burn out?
