Start Ten Posts: Creating a WordPress SketchbookJoe Hertvik: Tech Machinist

Here’s a trick I use to insure I can keep pumping out new WordPress blog posts whenever I’m ready to publish: pre-staging new blog posts, even when I’m not ready to finish writing them.

Here’s how to do it. I offer this technique as a tip to keep moving even you’re stuck writing your next blog post.

WordPress drafts as a blogging sketch book

When I get a good idea that I think will make a great blog post for joehertvik.com, I write it down on a piece of paper and shove it in my pocket or in my wallet.

The next time I get in front of WordPress, I go to the All Posts section and click on the Add New button to start a new draft. I retype my idea into the body of the new post and then come up with a suitable headline. I then save the draft post and work on something else or walk away.

After doing this for a while, I have a number of unworked draft post ideas hanging around, sometimes as many as ten. Whenever I get stuck for something to write, I pull up my draft post list and review each one to see where it’s at. I can do a number of things with these unfinished posts, including:

Deleting them if the idea is too silly, unworkable, or I decide it’s something I don’t want to write. This helps me weed out the stupid ideas.
Looking at the drafts and seeing that I don’t have anything to add today
Adding another sentence or paragraph to a post in process and then save it again
Restating or reworking the idea into something I hadn’t thought about when I created the original draft post
Finishing a post I’ve been tinkering with because all the ideas, inspiration, and notes finally came together and I’m ready to post it
Deciding I don’t want to work on any of the partially completed posts and go out and start something new

By keeping, reviewing, and updating my draft post list as a WordPress sketchbook, I get my creative juices flowing and next thing I know, I’ve got something worthwhile to write. It’s the equivalent of a WordPress doodle pad. When I get stuck, I can always go through my sketchbook of partially completed posts and work on one or two ideas to get them a little more ready to publish. Eventually, one of these posts will become so complete that all I have to do is clean it up and voila, I’ve got a new blog post I can put up that day.

The draft post list helps provide me with ideas and a template for moving forward. As long as I keep putting ideas in there, I find it’s easy to restart blog production when I get stuck.

Start Ten Posts and See What Happens

I can summarize this technique for creating blog posts as:

Start ten posts and see what happens

It’s a great way to keep the ideas flowing and prep future blog posts until they’re ready to release to production.

As I’ve said before, quality is production and this is a nice technique to keep the blog posts flowing by building one idea at a time.