# Writing & Blogging with Passion: Create a Flexible Editorial Plan & Calendar - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/writing-and-blogging-with-passion-create-a-flexible-editorial-plan-and-calendar/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Writing · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Writing & Blogging with Passion: Create a Flexible Editorial Plan & Calendar Updated August 2026 Theresa Christine · Freelance Travel Writer + Blogger Intermediate · 124 min A structured way to plan blog content around your life instead of your life around a rigid calendar you'll abandon in three weeks. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fwriting-and-blogging-with-passion-create-a-flexible-editorial-plan-and-calendar%2F2085260632) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. Theresa Christine's course promises a middle path between rigid content calendars and pure improvisation, and for the most part it delivers exactly that. The class is built as a sequence of self-assessment exercises rather than a lecture on blogging theory: you look at your own capacity and interests, then your blog's past performance, then your reader's habits, before any calendar gets touched. That ordering is the course's clearest strength. Too many planning guides start with the grid; this one insists you understand what you're capable of producing and what has actually worked before you fill in a single date. ## The analytics and content-audit stretch Lessons 2 and 3 walk through Google Analytics in a genuinely practical way, pointing to specific reports (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages for pageviews, the Acquisition tab for traffic sources, the "Users by Time of Day" chart for posting windows) rather than vague advice to "check your stats." The instructor also builds in a fallback for anyone without analytics access, suggesting comment counts and social shares as a substitute signal, which keeps the exercise usable even for a newer blog. The average-reading-speed detail, 300 words per minute measured against actual time-on-page, is a small but concrete trick for spotting posts that are too long for how people actually read them. The batch-posting concept, explained through a baking-a-dozen-cookies analogy, is presented as the mechanical engine that makes the whole plan work: brainstorming, writing, photo editing, and social copy are each done in bulk sessions rather than one post at a time. It's not a new idea to anyone who has read general productivity advice, but its application here to blog production specifically, and its return in nearly every later lesson as the tool for increasing output without burning out, gives it more weight than a passing mention would. ## Where the calendar-building lessons earn their keep The two lessons where the instructor builds a real editorial calendar for her own dessert blog are the strongest material in the course. Watching categories (Italian desserts, holiday posts, quick desserts, main ingredients, general how-tos) get slotted against a real calendar, adjusted around vacations, and then deliberately unbalanced and rebalanced when a week looks too heavy, teaches more than the abstract instruction that precedes it. The subsequent lesson on flexibility, where a sudden burst of motivation or a slow week forces a reshuffle, is where the course's central promise actually gets demonstrated rather than just described. The weaker spots are the tools lesson, which is little more than a rundown of Google Calendar, Trello, Google Sheets, Airtable, and ClickUp without a strong recommendation, and the reliance throughout on having an established blog with real traffic history. Someone without months of published posts and analytics data will find several of the audit exercises hollow. At 124 minutes across fourteen lessons, the pacing is reasonable, though the course spends more time narrating its own example than pushing the viewer toward variations on their own niche. For a working blogger stuck between rigid planning and none at all, it's a useful and specific system. For anyone still building their first month of content, it will feel premature. The standout The live walkthrough of building an actual 3-month calendar, category by category and holiday by holiday, then reshuffling it when a week gets overloaded, is the one section worth the price of admission. ## What you will learn - · How to assess realistic weekly output and use batch posting to raise it without burnout - · How to mine Google Analytics (or comments and social shares as a substitute) for pageviews, time-on-page, and traffic sources - · How to build content categories, capped at eight, and loosely-themed series that don't lock posts to a specific weekday - · How to lay out a full 3-month editorial calendar in Google Calendar combined with a task list - · How to rebalance the calendar mid-quarter when motivation, time, or energy shifts - · How to pick organizational tools (Google Calendar, Trello, Airtable, ClickUp) suited to solo versus team blogging Best for: An established blogger with a clear niche and reader profile who has editorial-calendar burnout and wants a system that bends instead of breaks. Skip it if: Brand-new bloggers without an existing audience, published post history, or analytics data, since several exercises assume all three already exist. Actionable Steps Organization of Lessons Helpful Examples Clarity of Instruction [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fwriting-and-blogging-with-passion-create-a-flexible-editorial-plan-and-calendar%2F2085260632)