What is Blogging Every Day? Well, that seems simple enough, right? If you blog every day, then you blog every day. Bloggers like John Scalzi at Whatever and Caitlin R. Kiernan at Dear Sweet Filthy World pop out a blog post almost every day, so, that would count, right?
Well, no, because they’re blogging machines, and I’m not. If they happen to blog every day, then it’s because protons haven’t decayed. If I happen to blog every day, then that’s damn dumb luck that there were a few days in a row that I blogged. That’s just “happening to blog on consecutive days”.
No, what I mean is taking on the challenge of producing a blog post for every day of the year.
I’ve had great luck with challenges in my creative career – 24 Hour Comic Day (draw 24 pages in 24 hours), the 48 Hour Film Project (shoot a film in 48 hours), Script Frenzy (to produce 100 pages of script in a month), to the granddaddy of them all, National Novel Writing Month (write 50,000 words of a new novel in one month, a challenge at which I have succeeded at forty-plus times).
So I’ve invented my own challenges. Drawing Every Day was initially difficult, but I succeeded at it last year for the first time – more on that tomorrow. Writing Every Day also is scattershot, as is Coding Every Week. Music (Practice) Every Day is deliberately getting sacrificed for the writing and drawing. And Social Media Every Week makes me break out into hives, which we’re having some success treating with cat therapy.
As for Blogging Every Day, here’s the rules of this challenge:
- The challenge starts in a calendar year (say, twenty twenty six).
- The goal is to produce one post for every day in that year.
- You can schedule posts ahead to deal with obligations.
- To count, the post must be intended for that day.
- “Retro” posts for missed days are allowed.
- Success is scheduling a post for every day in the year within the year.
- Completion is writing a post for every day in a year, regardless of when it is written.
“To count, the post must be intended for that day” needs a little explanation. If you’ve not been blogging, and something happens – like a family party you want to share, or a movie you want to review, or someone being wrong on the Internet – then that motivated post doesn’t count as blogging every day. If you are blogging every day, then all topics are fair game – but don’t count posts that weren’t taken on as part of the challenge, because then you’re back to depending on luck, or proton decay.
“Retro” posts and “Completion” also deserve a statement. For my Drawing Every Day project, I draw far ahead – about 80+ days right now for 2026 – since I know my drawing is “bursty”. But I can pretty much similarly guarantee I’ll miss a post at, say, Dragon Con. So you can “backfill” and have it count – as in my Drawing Every Day project, where I have now started backfilling 2024’s missing drawings (I have about 120 drawings left to finish for 2024).
This is different than, say, Vandy Beth Glenn’s approach to Running Every Day. At one point her “running every day” streak had gotten insanely large, like over 1,000, and someone asked her: “Do you ever miss a day?” Her response: “No, because I would not have been running for every day.”
That’s great, but I’m not trying to create a streak of consecutive blogging: I’m trying to create a collection of blog posts for every day of the year. So I will blog, schedule posts, blog ahead, backfill, retro, whatever to put myself in the habit of making sure I’ve blogged every day.
And what I’ve found with the Drawing Every Day project is that that discipline – treating it as a collection that I am trying to fill, rather than a streak I’m trying to achieve – has enabled me to build up a buffer and build up my drawing muscles and get my regular practice going.
Here’s to that for Blogging Every Day 2026 … Day Two!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki, helping me blog.
