Help Me Help You

I’m Struggling With Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs

I’d Sure Appreciate Your Help In Fixing Things

Good morning from The Godfather of Medium!

As we’ve grown here at Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs, we’re experiencing some changes. Most are wonderful and exciting things. I’m loving all of the writing submissions we’re getting with so many new staff writers from all over the world.

Thank you guys for putting your work and art into our publication. We’ve been very open and accepting of all styles and genres of writing. But there is one type that I am going to have to reject now, as we’ve grown to a point of this taking up so much of my own time. The ones that are inaccurate and full of mistakes.

As the only person who proofreads and edits every writing submission that comes across our publication, I will admit that I need some help. I am considering adding another editor. But so far, I’ve been able to keep up with all of the submissions and proofread, edit, and publish them quickly.

I think most of our BBB writers would agree that I’m quick to publish, other than during the hours I sleep. For me to be able to stay that efficient with publishing your work, I need something from all of you in return.

Most of you do an excellent job with proofreading and editing your pieces before submitting them to us. But because of the inclusive nature of accepting everyone who wants to write for BBB, there are those who aren’t doing enough to send in polished, error-free submissions.

I don’t mind mistakes. In fact, I’m glad to proofread, edit, and publish those pieces that come across with up to 20 errors. I use Grammarly, so I can instantly scan and count how many errors any given writing piece has.

I have fixed all of these errors myself, up to this point. But as we’ve grown to over 2500 followers and over 300 writers, I don’t have the time to edit writing pieces with more than 20 errors. It prevents me from publishing your articles and blogs in the time-efficient manner that you’re used to.

So here’s what you can do for me to help ease the workload: Install Grammarly. It’s free. Or find something similar to use. This will catch most of your errors and will ensure that when you send your writing pieces to me, I will approve them rather than send them back to you for additional editing.

I know some have mentioned that they don’t enjoy using Grammarly, as it has a tendency to correct certain words or phrases that you don’t intend for it to correct. I run into this myself, daily. But I’d much rather have it catch and correct 90% of my errors, while I can handle the 10% of its annoying changes.

I appreciate you guys. I want everyone to be able to write for Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs and have their writing submissions published quickly, in the way that you’ve grown accustomed to. For that to happen though, I need some of you to do a better job of proofreading and editing on your end, before you send them over to me.

We have decided that we’d set up a channel at our BBB Writers Discord Server for those who might need a little extra help in learning how to better proofread and edit their writing pieces. It will be up soon. Join us here and we’ll gladly help you with anything you might be struggling with.

There’s another thing I need a little extra help with: Picture usage. We are seeing too many writing pieces come in that have no credit under the pictures you’re using. We cannot publish a piece until the pictures you use are credited.

If they are your own, please just note that under them in the caption. “Photo by Author”. That’s easy. And if you’re using them from somewhere other than the built-in Unsplash option, you need to be sure they are free to use.

We’re hearing too many horror stories about writers getting sued for thousands of dollars because they are using images that they THOUGHT were ok to use, only citing the websites they’ve pulled them from. That’s not good enough, sadly.

I wrote a piece not long ago about some specific guidelines and ways to protect yourself from being sued. Please read about it here:

If we get a submission from you that doesn’t have all images credited or ones from sources that are not free-use sites, I’ll have to reject them. I’ll send you a note with it as to why, but we can’t have those writing pieces in BBB.

This is to protect you as well as BBB from lawsuits. It’s not difficult to use proper free-usage images, use the built-in Unsplash images, or the websites like Pexels, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, etc... Some writers design their own images and that is a 100% effective way to protect themselves.

Growing pains can be difficult. But they are necessary to help make us better, more skilled writers. And to make Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs an even bigger, better force to be reckoned with. We have more room for additional awesome writers if you can work with these newer guidelines.

I truly appreciate your compliance and support on this. Thank you! &:^)