Writing more by writing less

I have a long list of things I want to write about, but the list is getting longer instead of shorter. I've been thinking lately about my writing process: writing down ideas, fleshing them out, learning a topic, writing a blog post, and making diagrams.

It's fun to write code for diagrams but it takes a long time. Bret Victor's talks make me painfully aware of how limited my tools are. Munificent Bob says he draws his illustrations by hand to save time. LostGarden has beautiful diagrams but it takes me a long time to use those tools. I've pondered a Wacom Cintiq or a Surface or a Galaxy Note or even a regular drawing tablet but I think paper and pen is simplest.

• Big pages: 1-4 months, learning + writing + interactive diagrams. These include Curved Roads, 2d Visibility, and Polygon Map Generation. The Noise Functions page was mostly learning, but I had very few interactive diagrams, so it went quicker. The Hexagons Guide was some learning and some things I already knew, and the interactivity is low, so it went quicker.
  


• Medium pages: 1-4 weeks, for topics I know, writing + interactive diagrams. Tower Defense Pathfinding and Probability for Damage Rolls would fit in this category. I knew the topics well, so much of the time was figuring out how I wanted to explain it, and implementing the diagrams.
  


• Small pages: 1-4 days, writing + non-interactive diagrams.
  

I'm pondering doing more of the small pages. I can upgrade them later if needed.