Fuuuuuck!? I’ve been writing this on Ginger and it crashed!

Three hours of work is now gone. I had to do this over again, fucking sucks. But I guess that’s on me. Your machine is bound to crash if you got many browsers with multiple tabs plus several other apps running on it. I guess I’ll chuck it up to experience.

Anyways, I’ll try to recreate the best I can what I have written or typed down so far. So, here it goes….

I talked about slaying my procrastidragon and getting the motivation to finish this thing that I have been trying to write for several days already.

So, this post is about me learning how to write and blog better here on Steemit. My aim for this is to be able to write down what I have in mind and rapidly parse out the ideas in my head and put it in a legible and interesting form. To do that, I’ve read a couple of posts that gave me some ideas, encouragement, and guidelines, that I plan on doing. As a matter of fact, I’m applying it right now.

As I’ve mentioned before , I was reading up on Yallapapi’s #Sharkschool series, which is a very funny, yet pragma... or as he puts it, "this shit it is real, bro!" take on finding your writer's voice, becoming a better writer, and getting noticed here on Steemit. He said that he’s been writing since he was a little kid and sees it as a form of expressing himself. He boasts that he can quickly write 2000+ word post in an intuitive manner. He can also easily see the connections and the structures of his paragraphs and format it in his head.

And I plan on being able to do that.

Putting Theory Into Practice

But first, I have to practice one of the lessons that I got from reading his long ass posts. That is to write, and write, then write some more, until I become at least somewhat good at it. That is lesson one for me right now, which is why I am planning on putting up a lot of posts here on Steemit. So be ready for a lot of content from me. But to do that, I also need your help, I do need some pestering from time to time so I can get up and slay that dragon again. So, I am thanking you, my beloved Steemians in advance.

Anyways, when I started this post, I was trying to follow some of the Cryptobro’s advice on being myself and being more colorful. I tried winging it and I wrote this blurb here, which I’d like to share with you just for the heck of it:

“So, I'm just following his advice because, as he puts it, I'm neither popular nor am I a hot chick with a huge rack.

Aaaaand... that's why we're here. I meant that's why I'm writing this. To help me become a better blogger, communicator, aaand... writer? author? Who knows really.

Why is that, you ask? Well, so I can get me all those needed upvotes, and views, and followers, so I can make all the money in the world! Then I can live on an island, sit underneath a coconut tree with my laptop, some protein shake in my hand, and doze off, surf, or do whatever the hell I want!

Buuut... I think I already did that. Well, some of that at least. I lived on one of the islands in the Philippines, although, technically was smack dab in the middle of the city, but you can drive to the beach in 30 mins. or 6 hours, depending on the traffic. So, I had that. I was also doing whatever I want, which was eat, sleep, workout a bit, rinse and repeat.”

Letting Go

I stalled. When I was writing that, I didn’t know where it was heading. Or, I just don’t like where it was about to go, it might be somewhere in my psyche that I’m not ready to share. I know, it sounds a lot like bull crap, but that is how I am feeling and I am sticking with it.

This leads me to the second person I chanced upon when I was looking for guides to following Steemians, Stellabelle. I found her post on Medium that talks about how to kill here and anywhere else, for that matter. One of the main ideas she shared was not to give a fuck about what people will say or think about what you write. Doing so will only hinder your creativity. Also, to write about things that will make your heart quiver or feel like you are about to expose too much of yourself. This bit resonated with me greatly since I have a dense filter in my head right now and on top of that, I am writing in my second language, which I’ve yet to master.

Anyways, I think I just need to clear that subconscious fear in my head about people laughing at me when I make these mistakes. I guess, I got that back in high school, which is a story for another day.

Taking Advantage of Technology

To breakthrough that barrier, I am taking advantage of the many apps that I can use as a cloaking device to evade the Grammernazis that hound people who unwittingly press enter without spell/grammar checking.

So, now I was writing this on Ginger, which unfortunately crashed on me probably because I used up my weekly correction allotment. My gorgeous Aunt Grace suggested to me to use it when she found some mistakes in my initial post. It turns out that it is a lot easier to take advantage of the technology around us and learn from it.

I also found this article comparing the different grammar correction softwares that are available out there. It was mainly focused on being which are Wordpress friendly but I was more interested in its analysis of which ones are the best to use. Since the free grammar app crashed on me, I am going with Grammarly. Haha! I also found out about the Hemingway editor through that article. It will show the readability of your work and highlights the text with different colors that suggest changes on your articles. It is quite easy to use but you still have to know the difference between active and passive voices and such, to be able to make the proper edits. But you really do not have to follow everything the app say, as this author’s review of the artificial intelligence app suggested.

Diving Deep Into Your Passion

Another bit that I gravitated towards in Stellabelle's post was her view on how to manage her different interests. Since, I have also been told that I dip too much into many things that I never get anything done, which I think is a valid criticism. But then again, I love learning new things. And I think I just realized that it is what I am passionate about. Learning, growing, and mastering skills. I’ve seen some Alan Watts videos on Youtube, I am kinda biased here, but I agree with him, especially on learning and developing skills. That’s another post that I think I have to write.

Anywho, going back to the Wolf of Steem, Stellabelle, her suggestion was to dive deep into your passions and read a lot about it. to gather as much information about it so you can share it with the world and hope that it helps humanity in some way.