You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been writing quite as much this year as I have in years past. I finally hit the wall that comes for all content creators. A combination of my job and the state of the industry meant that I found myself slipping off my self-appointed weekly posting schedule more and more often in 2023. In fact, there were several times I skipped a whole week to get put something out every other week, especially in the latter half of the year.

I’ve always wanted to keep the content level high around here and give my audience things to think about. As the year wore on I found myself running out of those ideas as portions of the industry slowed down. If other people aren’t getting excited about tech why should I? Sure, I could probably write about Wi-Fi 7 or SD-WAN or any number of topics over and over again but it’s harder to repeat yourself for an audience that takes a more critical eye to your writing than it is for someone that just wants to churn out material.

My Bruce Wayne job kept me busy this year. I’m proud of all the content that we created through Tech Field Day and Gestalt IT, especially things like the weekly Rundown show. Writing a post every week is hard. Writing a snarky news show script is just as taxing. If I can find a way to do that I can find a way to write, right?

Moving Targets

Alas, in order to have a plan for content creation you have to make a plan and then stick to it. I did that last year with my Tomversations pieces and it succeeded. This year? I managed to make one. Granted, it was a good one but it was still only one. Is it because I didn’t plan ahead far enough? Or because I didn’t feel like I had much to say?

Part of the secret behind writing is to jot down your ideas right away , no matter how small they might be. You can develop an idea that has merit. You can’t develop a lack of an idea. I have a note where I add quotes and suggestions and random things that I overhear that give me inspiration. Sometimes those ideas pan out. Other times they don’t. I won’t know either way if I don’t write them down and do something about them. If you don’t create the ground for your ideas to flourish you’ll have nothing to reap when it’s time.

The other thing that causes falloffs in content creation is timing. I always knew that leaving my posts until Friday mornings was going to eventually bite me and this year was the year with teeth. Forcing myself to come up with something in a couple of hours time initially led to some pretty rushed ideas and that later pushed into the following Monday (or beyond). While creating a schedule for my thoughts has helped me stay consistent throughout the years the pressures on my schedule this year have meant letting some things slip when they weren’t critical. Hard to prioritize a personal post over a work video that needs to be edited or a paper that needs to be written first.

One other thing that I feel merits some mention is the idea of using tools to help the creative process. I am personally against using a GPT algorithm to write for me. It just doesn’t sound like me and I feel that having something approximating who I am doesn’t have the same feel. Likewise, one of the other things this year that I’m fighting with is word predictions in writing tools. Not as bad as full-on content creation but merely “suggestions” about what word I want to use next. I’ve disabled them for the most part because, while helpful in certain situations they annoy me more than anything when writing. Seeing a tool suggest a word for me while I’m in the flow of writing a post is like hearing a note a half step out of tune in a piece of music. It’s just jarring enough to take you out of the whole experience. Stop trying to anticipate what I’m going to say and let me say it!

Producing Ahead

Does all this mean I’m giving up on my writing? Not hardly. I still feel like writing is my best form of communication. Even a simple post about complaining about my ability to write this year is going to be wordy. I feel it’s because written words give us more opportunity to work at our own pace. When we watch videos we work at someone else’s idea of a learning pace. If you make a ten-minute video to get across a point that could have been read in three minutes you’re either doing a very good job of explaining everything or you’re padding out your work. I prefer to skim, condense, and study the parts that are important to me. I can’t really do that with a video.

I feel the written form of content is still going to be king for years to come. You can search words. You can rephrase words. You can get a sense for how dense a topic is by word count. There’s value in seeing the entire body of knowledge in front of you before you begin. Besides, the backspace key is a whole lot easier to edit than doing another take and remembering to edit out the bad one in the first place.

Tom’s Take

Writing is practically meditation for me at this point. I can find a topic I’m interested in and write. Empty my brain of thoughts and ideas and let them take shape here. AI can’t approximate that for me. Video has too many other variables to worry about. That’s why I’m a writer. I love the way the process works with just a keyboard, a couple of references, and my brain doing the heavy lifting. I’m not sure what my schedule for posting is going to look like in 2024 and beyond but trust me when I say it’s not going away any time soon.