Over on Ryze, Linda Bohrnerud asks how long it takes people to write articles. She writes for a business blog and talks working on two articles for over a week. John Williams responds that it is a bit like asking "how long is a piece of string". My first reaction was to think of Abraham Lincoln’s famous line. When asked how long a man’s legs should be, Lincoln responded, “long enough to reach the ground”. Probably the same applies to how long it should take to write an article. Long enough to make your point.

That said, I am sure that Sigmund, Carl and Alfred would note that based on this criteria, most bloggers don’t spend enough time writing their blog posts.

Will Kessel notes that “a ten or fifteen paragraph essay can take anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours, depending on how invested I am” Cliff Kuhn, M.D. notes the importance for him of creating an outline.

For me, I find that it varies a lot. I have some blog entries that have been sitting in the corner of my mind for weeks. Sometimes I toss and turn in bed for an hour at four in the morning giving birth to a new blog entry which I get up and post. Others, I whip off in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I outline, often I don’t.

She also asked, "Do you get someone else to copy edit or proof read them for you?" I rarely have them proof read. I generally do that myself. Then she asked, "Does it get easier with practice?" For me, it does.

One of the things that I wonder about as I read her post is about people getting writers block; getting stuck part way through an article? Does this happen to you? If so, what do you do? I know that it happens to me, and when it happens, I usually figure my thoughts aren't ready and I put the article aside for however long it takes, which might even result in the article never getting written.

So, let me through this out to both of you that read my blog. How long does it take you to write a blog entry?

P.S. It took me about ten minutes to pull this blog entry together.