One Year Anniversary Post
As a celebration of my blog's one-year anniversary, I will shed some insight into the process by which I make blog entries.
Step 1: The Idea
The first step is coming up with an idea. As you may have noticed thus far, I have several types of categories of blog entries, from analysis of scenes in various works to essays that express various opinions.
This is in many ways, the easiest step, and I often find myself passively coming up with ideas when I am doing other things, such as walking, driving my car or relaxing before bedtime. Not all of those ideas are worth pursuing, but for those that are, I proceed to step 2.
Step 2: Planning It Out
The next step is planning the blog post. I generally have a rough outline of how I want to proceed, although I may change the specifics when I actually work on it. Some blog entries have a specific layout, while in other cases, it may be a standard essay format- an introductory paragraph, a few body paragraphs and a conclusion.
At this stage, I may sometimes discard a few of my half-formed thoughts, if I decide they would not make for good blog entries. Sometimes, ideas seem better in my head than they are in reality, in which case I abandon them in favor of more worthwhile topics.
Step 3: Writing It Up
In many of my writing projects, I finds that writing up my work is the simplest and shortest step, since when I outline my work, I decide what I am going to say and how I am going to express it.
Like in Step 2, there are some cases in which I end up being dissatisfied with the end result and discarding it.
Step 4: Revision
After finishing writing up a blog post, I may leave it be for a little while to let it "marinate," a technique I learned in college. The theory behind the technique is that if you wait for a while before revising, you might be in a better frame of mind to make the changes that you need to. After that waiting period, I take a look over the blog entry and usually make whatever changes I need to, usually fixing spelling mistakes, changing phrasing or adding or removing details as necessary. The overall message doesn't change, only how I express it.
Usually, if I manage to get a first draft up, I am satisfied with the work enough to make it to the final step- publishing the blog entry.
Step 5:Publication
The last step is to hit the Publish button and make a new blog post. In general, I aim to update once every five days, if not less, and there are many times in which I leave mostly completed blog entries so I can have something to publish the next time I want to update my blog.
Conclusion
As with any creative endeavor, it is often easier to come up with ideas than to actually put them to paper, and I have many blog entries I discarded before making the ones you see here. Nevertheless, I have no shortage of things I would like to discuss on this blog, so I appreciate your taking the time to read this blog over the past year, and hope you will continue to do so in the future.
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