Prove you can write regularly before you think about the tools

I’ve had a couple people email me asking about which blogging platform to pick. Here’s the response I sent to one of them:

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The question is: do you actually want to write or do you want to have a blog? Lots of people want to “be a person who blogs” and end up spending lots of time on their blog setup because that’s more fun than sitting down and writing a post.

If you want to write regularly, if that is the end goal, then start there. You’re not allowed to care about the tools until you’ve proven you are capable of regular writing.

For me, this WordPress.com blog is maybe the 10th blog system I’ve had. Off the top of my head, I’ve used:

• Tumblr
• Chyrp
• CodeIgniter
• Drupal 7
• Drupal 8
• Static HTML
• Gatsby + Airtable
• Gatsby + markdown

And maybe 1 or 2 others. This one stuck because I didn’t build it and I don’t have to think about it. With the ones I built myself, I felt like it was never done or perfect. There was always some dependency out of date or some CSS I wanted to tinker with, and I couldn’t focus on the writing with that hanging over me. WordPress.com saved me because it’s not mine to maintain.

So here’s my advice: spend no more than 10 minutes setting up a dummy blog on WordPress or Medium or Write.as. Then set a goal of 25 posts. Once you get to 25 posts then you’re allowed to spend all the time you want overhauling and setting up your blog system.

But if you can’t write 25 posts, then rebuilding your blog is a waste of time.