One rationale for this blog was to conduct a writing experiment. I might write emails regularly, but writing about topics of my choosing isn’t a task I find myself undertaking regularly – hence the creation of this blog. I’ve learned a number of lessons already and will share them to reflect on later and for others to contemplate if undertaking a similar writing experiment.
Practice makes perfect
The first few articles took surprisingly long for me to write, but it’s getting faster, easier, and more entertaining with each week. Not a surprising finding, since I’ve heard of this phenomena on other blogs.
Laziness is the enemy
I’ll admit that many articles so far have been written at the last minute, since I don’t currently keep a backlog of posts. I read the warnings from others that posts should be written well in advance of posting, but I decided that I wanted to write on a regular cadence, making a backlog unnecessary. Yet, given that not every week’s schedule is created equal, I plan to build up a backlog of 3-5 posts to give myself some breathing room if a stretch of a few weeks happens to get busy.
Weekly posts still take substantial time
I thought posting monthly was too infrequent, but weekly posts still take over an hour per week at my current writing rate. Hopefully this will improve.
Finding preferred writing topics
I’ve been indecisive about what direction I want to take the blog, so it’s currently in an experimental phase without specifics focal topics. Instead, I’ve decided to write about a variety of topics that interest me to see which ones I most enjoy writing about. In the meantime, I hope the range of topics either teaches a few new things or provides thoughtful subject matter.
Next level improvements
Now that I’ve gotten the hang of writing basic posts, I’ll probably put some effort into improving my writing style, focusing on fewer topics, and a few other areas of improvement.
Weekly Extreme Exception
To be honest, linking to these fun videos are a good motivator to keep writing! After catching up on some recent action with commercial space startups, it looks like the number of people building rocket engines continues to increase. In some ways it’s no surprise. While under 500 satellites were launched in 2017, the need for additional launch capacity continues to grow. Satellite constellations for global internet coverage are just one source of demand. Currently, OneWeb is considering a constellation of 2,000 satellites, while SpaceX is pondering a network of about 12,000 satellites. To get us there, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket appears to be leading the vanguard of new rocket startups, given their successful orbital launch in January. Hats off to NZ for hosting not just Rocket Lab but also Kitty Hawk (whose video was featured in this previous post).
