I have dabbled on and off as a writer for a while now. It was a natural step to take for someone who enjoys storytelling. It is also probably a large part of why I love working on video games. Video games always tell a story, even if it is not a story-based game. This week’s random article is about writing and story-telling.
Last year I made a commitment to blogging weekly as a way of working on my writing skills, and I am still maintaining the habit. I never got to figuring out “the twitter”, which was the other commitment I made to myself. I may revisit that one soon. Part of the problem is that I have an extensive community on facebook and they give me plenty of social reciprocity for my limited story-telling. Also, Linkedin is a serviceable platform for broadcasting my writing.
Let’s talk a little about my goals for my blog this week. Here are the five goals.
- I wanted to get better at writing.
- I wanted to write regularly to build a habit.
- I wanted to offer some education from my career.
- I wanted to build an audience.
- I wanted to start promoting things I am working on.
As an exercise, I am going to evaluate myself on each of them.
First Goal: I wanted to get better at writing.
I would say I am “just successful” here. The metrics week-over-week would disagree. I am blessed with a good friend who reads these articles and takes most of the cartoon stink-lines out of them. I generally get 10 corrections per page per week, split between grammatical syntax fixes (80%) and rephrasing requests for my stream-of-consciousness writing. I generally pour most of these articles out in a single session lasting thirty to seventy minutes. It is hard for me to re-read my own writing and catch the subtle errors.
Second Goal: I wanted to write regularly to build a habit.
I am going to say I am “very successful” here. I have lots of things to write about yet, and I am maintaining a pace. I get nervous every few months when my “to do” pile of articles runs dry. I think I can sustain this for at least another three to six months. Caveat: I say that to myself every three to six months.
Third Goal: I wanted to offer some education from my career.
I am going to say I am “very successful” here. I am actually humbled by the number of people who reach out to me when I write an article. It is seldom zero and it gets up to ten people sometimes. I really appreciate everyone’s feedback and validation on what I am writing. The majority of people with whom I have discussed some of my articles have been people I have worked with in the past. A smaller number are people who have read something that touched them and wanted to learn more.
Fourth Goal: I wanted to build an audience.
I am going to say I am “just successful” here. I was tempted to invent a new category of “successful” for my audience-building goals, but I stopped. It started to read like one of those long articles in an online recipe that you scroll past because it is just a random wall of text that isn’t the recipe you came to find. So let’s just say that I am pleased with the slow growth of my little writing habit, even if I am not an internet marketing guru. I am also going to skip past using this as a not-so-subtle plea to all of you to share these articles with your friends. Maybe. I am going to have to spend some time thinking about things I can do to make that “very successful”.
Fifth Goal: I wanted to start promoting things I am working on.
This is where it falls apart. I am not successful at promoting things I am working on. I have at least one hobby-project that I completed last year that needs to find its legs. I also have another project in the works that has suffered from some unrelated delays. I did write some horrible e-books I am going to link here ironically (desperately? curiously?) to see if anything happens. If nothing else, you can see how far I have come from the amusing little stories that were the genesis of my writing experiences. I also have some other things I want to promote. I have a game I am building that I want to talk to you all about when the time is right. I made some little web apps here and there. I also would like to participate (on a part time basis) in building venture studios. Perhaps these other projects have all moved a lot more slowly than I wanted them to because I am spending time focusing on my writing, working through a global pandemic, and supporting a family. Regardless, the other goals have been met so well that I do not regret being unsuccessful here.
I make myself take a local hike after I am done my weekend writing. It gives me time to reflect on what I have said and what I should do differently. I may write a follow-up post to this article if I decide that I need to revamp my writing goals for this year.
Thank you again for reading! I apologize that this is a lot shorter than usual—blah blah blah Easter. For upcoming articles I have some thoughts on the Epic Games’ monopoly lawsuit, some opinions on “ad-hoc extracurricular education” while working professionally, and more ongoing lessons-from-the-trenches about engineering-management do’s and don’ts. The rambly ranting will resume next week!
