The Organised Approach to Websites, Part 1

I have a mixture of styles, disorganised and organised. I tried some of the approaches and step-by-step methods to writing articles. They just don't work very well for me. I'm more inclined towards spontaneity.

That said, I do have a list of ideas percolating. I will juggle them in my mind while going about my day. Come writing time, somehow, they congregate, and then I have this direction.

Sometimes, it's one of the ideas with lots of supporting material. Sometimes, it's a few of the ideas mixed together into one article.

So I'm actually doing your steps 1 to 3 most of the time, not just at writing time. Then during the actual writing, it's just filling in words and sentences, and lots of quality control and review.

I also find it useful writing down headings first. It's usually headings, filling details, a conclusion, and then the introduction. Unless I've already thought of the intro, it's hard to introduce something I haven't written yet, so the intro's done at the end.

This "disorganised" method is organised to me. :)

Hm... I'll think about it. Luckily for me, it's a five part post. Although, I do all those things for the most part already but maybe not in so much detail as you've mentioned here. Can't wait for the next installment!

I had one post I was attempting to write that just wouldn't come together. It was rattling around in my head but I couldn't get it to make enough sense to write it. So I took a similar approach to this. I think the biggest step for me was removing myself from the computer and using pen and paper in another room. Then I started to just make dot points about the kinds of things I was thinking about including. Slowly the post started to take shape.

I find with my personal blog that I just write how I think/talk and that works. It's a whole different ball game when you're writing posts that are informative/teaching type posts.

I also think the review step is an important one and one that I could do with doing more of. What's working and what isn't? What's getting response from readers. That kind of thing.

Very effective image by the way! :)

Vincent - you see, I was all about spontaneity when I first got into blogging. It was initially because I wrote a personal blog and I was really just saying what I did and how I felt. My tutorials are time consuming mainly because of the screenshots, and also because I have to work through the process I'm writing about as I write the tutorial. However, it's my other posts - the theories and best practices - that have been getting tougher to write as each week passes. I'm in serious danger of having no "writable" content using the old approach. Something had to change. It sounds like you're already doing some of what I suggested here, just in a not so organised way - and if it works for you, I'm not going to tell you not to do it. :) Identifying the need for change is coming up later in this series, so watch out for my thoughts on that.

fragileheart - I'll be interested to hear your comments as this series unfolds. And you know what? I'm beginning to think that a five-part series is a really good way to write great content. We shall see!

Lightening - I should use pen and paper a lot more than I do. I've got myself into the mindset that it's OK to do everything on the computer and save some paper. But I love my whiteboards and I like making notes on paper. I need a desktop whiteboard though as I have two big whiteboards that are just propped up against the wall as there isn't an easy way to hang them up. As I said in my reply to Vincent, writing a personal blog may actually be easier to do, at least some of the time. The "train of thought" method, writing as you remember things, can work well for that type of site. Reviewing is a great thing to do - learn from your mistakes, and build on your successes. You can probably tell I'm really getting into this subject at the moment. :)

Thanks for the comments, keep 'em coming.

I think this is a good topic. But there are different ways of handling organization for a personal blog versus something topical. Personal blogs should be kind of random. I think the best thing for me is to keep a written list of topics I could write about. Then write the post and if I still want to say more I save it in drafts to finish later. I seldom do this as the first inspiration seems to work best for me. I can always post more thoughts in another post another time. A topical blog, such as yours, needs to have posts which are not tossed in as the mood hits you.

Laura, thanks for the comment. I agree that some blogs are fine to just write things as they occur (see my reply to Vincent in comment #4 for more of my views on this). Mostly I think we just have to find a way that works for our site, run with it for a bit, then adapt (if needed) as time goes on.

There's something about stepping away from the computer and going to pen-and-paper that really works for me, for shaping a post idea and mind-mapping the main points, on the way to writing the subheads that will form an outline. The process you decribe is, essentially, the way I work professionally - and especially when doing tutorials, which need to be rigorously structured - but I think I'd count myself as one of the many who could be more disciplines about long-range organization.

On the other hand, I agree with Laura's point about personal blogs being handled differently. There, like her, I keep a list of topics to write about (because there are bound to be days without inspiration) but the actual writing tends to be more stream-of-consciousness - followed by review and editing to make it more coherant.

Thanks for the comment, Jen. :) It's good to hear you're already doing something similar - that certainly validates the process as far as I'm concerned.

It does seem like personal blogs are a different matter entirely. I'd add that a site should always look at what works best for them, rather than taking advice too literally and assuming it'll revolutionise their site. It's more of a set of guidelines than hard and fast rules - they are there to be used and abused. Adapt and conquer! :)

Ben...this is a great topic, especially for those that are new to blogging. I approach my posts with a goal in mind, and think of them as small papers. In school (university) we had a paper due each week. I would always research the topic and layout ideas beforehand. I felt that it made the end product that much better. If you give your readers something of quality and worth reading they will return.

Thanks Bryan. :) Great content is very, very important to me, both as a writer and as a reader. I hope this approach helps a few people to improve their sites without requiring a lot of extra time.