My Thought Process for Writing
Being relatively new to writing on Medium, I had to find ways to help me get my thoughts into meaningful articles. To do this I rely on different tools which, depending on the resources required I choose one over the other. Being on Medium also give me the opportunity to read interesting and well-written articles from amazing writers which help me improve my writing in the long run. Or at least I hope that I get better at it.
Why do I write?
Before joining Medium, I used several other platforms to share my thoughts and photographs with the community. At some point however, I created a blog on my website and transitioned to write there. There was one major flaw, the blog wasn’t easily accessible to the public and although I was writing, nobody was reading.
Getting back to the point I write for two reasons.
Firstly, writing for me is a sort of journal. I write articles with my thoughts and experiences, usually related to photography. In doing so, I am reflecting on the lessons and other key points I can take which will in turn shape up the same article.
Secondly and most importantly, I get to share all this with the community. Maybe my writings will serve and be useful to someone and in turn I might get comments that further elaborate on my writings. It is a process of sharing and receiving knowledge.
From thoughts to articles
When preparing to write an article I usually require three things.
- The subject, thought, idea, or experience I am writing about
- Images to support the article
- A little bit of research
All my ideas always start as a list item. These are noted in a digital to-do list and left there until I start drafting the article.
Depending on what I am writing about, I might need to do a bit of research to make sure that what I am writing is correct. To do this I gather the information into a digital note taking app.
Once I have the material in hand, I will start drafting the article on paper, or to be more exact, a notebook. Once done, I will have a general idea of how the finished article will be divided and how it will flow.
The next step is to switch my writings to a digital form. To do this, I usually transcribe it to my note taking app using my smartphone. In this way, I am reading the article and making sure the sentences relate and accompany each other.
Hopefully this will result in my articles being read better by Medium’s text-to-speech option.
What is left are the images/photos. If I am writing on general stuff, I sometimes opt to use stock images. However, when writing about photography, I always try to support it with my photos. The benefit of this is twofold; I get an opportunity to share my work and get feedback in return. If the readers like my work, well that is an added bonus for me (and the most rewarding).
Changes in workflow
Although the method described above is my most common workflow, I tend to switch things up depending on the article.
If it is something which I am really confident about and know exactly what I wish to say, I opt to directly start drafting on Medium.
On the other hand, if my article draft looks very good on paper, I might opt to scan it and through OCR copy the whole text directly to Medium.
What I am trying to say here is that I am not always stuck to the main workflow. I am just sharing so maybe it is of use to some readers out there
Keep writing
Finally, before closing this article, I cannot stress the importance of continuing to write. I found this process to help me improve my photographic journey (in my case) and the more I keep at it, the more interaction I have from the Medium community out there which I can learn from.
As always, thanks for your time in reading. Until the next one.