97 Minutes: Spring Football

I've said for nearly a year now that I need to write more short articles. Lately, when I flip on the writing switch, it takes me at least four hours to write something. Some of those NERDstat articles for football were pushing 15-18 hours last fall with one of them topping out at nearly 7,000 words.

I enjoy tapping into that side of my creative brain. I enjoy getting lost in a topic and exploring it from every angle. I believe most of my best writing comes from that. But it means that so many topics and so many articles get lost in the shuffle. This will sound weird, but I've gotten to the point where I'm not happy with 80% of the articles I write that are less than 1,500 words. They don't feel complete. I've deleted several of them because I don't think they're up to the standard of the site.

This is a problem. I'm... a real estate company running the numbers and realizing that we have agents selling luxury homes and we have agents selling starter homes but we've suddenly lost the mid-range market. You, the reader, have lost so many articles this way. I've finally realized that it's a real problem.

Illini Blogger Realizes His Articles Are Too Thorough, Changes Course

Basically, I've leaned so far into "fanalyst" that I've not been writing many articles in the mid-range. If there's no "let me roll up my sleeves and analyze this all morning and all afternoon", I've been avoiding it. I wasn't sure what to do about it during the season, but now that we've reached the website "offseason", I can start to make some changes.

Here's the first attempt. When I had a real job and way less time to write, I would do a lot the Pick My Post stuff (something that has now been transformed into a fundraiser every May around here). The old version of Pick My Post was restricted to 45 minutes. I'd have 45 minutes some evening after my kids went to bed and so I'd put out a "pick my post", pick a topic that someone suggested, and then set a timer for 45 minutes or 60 minutes. That was all the time I had and so when the timer stopped, I published what I had. My brain will always go off on tangents, so PMP was a good way to color inside the lines.

Since PMP is something else now, I'm going to try some of these this spring: 97 Minutes. I've set the timer here on my phone...

...and when I press start, I have to publish this 97 minutes later. I'm sure it seems dumb that I have to do this, but the way my brain works, I have to have a deadline like that. I'll want to expand on 70% of the paragraphs I write and that timer will keep me in line.

Today's topic: spring football so far. I attended one 45 minute open practice session before spring break and then the open practice on Friday night (notes for those go on Slack). I have a lot of thoughts, but I don't want to wander all over, so with only 97 minutes to write, I should be able to focus my brain. Here we go. Pressing start... now.