Some people seem amazed that I have put out about 400 posts a year for over five years here at RJsCorner! But in reality I usually struggle to limit it to that many! 🙂
I often, like today, have at least twenty posts ready to go online. No, I don’t spend all day at my computer writing. In fact I usually spend no more than part of a couple of days a week engaged in generating posts. I know my blogging process is probably unique to me but maybe some of you can learn something from it.
My process for daily posts here at RJsCorner is to browse my Internet news sources every morning and saving possible post stories to a draft file. Other sources are the books I constantly read and of course inspirations from my heroes in life and of course what comes off the top of my head. 🙂 Most of my post ideas are just a few quotes or maybe a editorial cartoon that gets me to thinking. At any one time there are usually about 30 or more stories in my draft bin. When a story goes there it somehow starts automatically brewing in my mind.
I don’t fully understand the internal process but I often find that I am at least subconsciously thinking about a couple dozen stories at any given time. Sometimes this process changes the original thoughts almost completely. Sometimes they go almost immediately to a published post and often times some end up in the trash. How I juggle all of this is a mystery to me; it just seems to happen.
When my mind spews out just the “right” words it then goes over to the scheduled bin where it usually sits for a couple more weeks. During this period I review it several times with slight editions here and there. As it gets close to the publish date each post gets a final review for grammar, any final thoughts and maybe a picture added. There are also time when like Whitman’s Leaves of Grass where I continue to edit a post even after it has been published. I just can’t seem to leave them alone.
That is my creative process. Sometimes my creativity is so active that I flesh out a dozen posts a day and sometimes a week goes by without any additional words being added. I don’t fully understand the process but one thing I do know is that I am passionate about most everything I write. I also recognize that I am obsessed with writing. It is something that I am just addicted to. I simply can’t not write even if no one cares to read the words I must put them to paper.
I don’t imagine I am unique in this regard. I know some of my heroes in life were addicted to the same thing. Teddy Roosevelt kept daily journals throughout his life. Thomas Jefferson wrote over 10,000 letters in his lifetime. And of course Will Rogers put out daily newspaper articles for most of this life before it was abruptly ended. That puts me in pretty good company if you ask me.
