How I write the articles that I'm posting on Hive

For a very long time I have been writing a multitude of articles on different websites, but mainly on Steemit and Hive. I have been posting on Medium as well, but not with as much determination and energy.

Although I have written hundreds, it not thousands of articles throughout all these years of posting, I never actively used a system that was meant to help me write faster and to publish more often. I have always just opened a note taking app (usually Evernote) and started writing whenever I had an idea.

Because of this lack of a system and this easiness with which I seem to be able to just write, I always thought that I was "gifted" with a bit of a talent in this particular area. I don't look at that statement as a compliment, especially not when it comes from other people, because if it is true, then I have not worked to get this skill, and I was just lucky to have it, and developed it throughout time with less effort than others.

However, as time is passing by, and as one of my pleasures in life is to pay attention to how things work, and to recognize patters in things, especially in my own actions, I noticed that while I don't actively try to do it, I do use a system that allows me to write a big number of articles in a short amount of time.

Before I begin to talk about this system however, I would like to mention one detail of great importance - the type of articles I write are, with no doubt, of a moderate to low quality. I am not trying to write academical works, nor am I approaching difficult subjects that require long hours of research.

I have mentioned before why I don't do this, but in short, the reason is that I both consider it a waste of time at the moment (for myself, since my time is very limited), and also because I don't presently have one particular subject that interests me enough to motivate me to do a lot of research on it and write about it at length.

Therefore, I simply write about my ideas, or about things I discover, like I would tell it to someone I know. I don't try to structure my articles in any particular way (although I did try to do it in the past), and I don't go too deep into any of those ideas.

With that in mind, let's proceed to the main point of this article which is the system that I noticed I have been using, unaware, for quite a while now, when writing articles, a system that allowed me to write a lot at times, despite the fact that my time and energy are both very limited.

It is actually very simple and it involves actions that have been used by a lot of other people on different activities.

First, I gather my ideas from different sources. I spend time on YouTube, watching a multitude of different videos, on different topics. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest, trying to get inspiration from beautiful artworks or random pins that I discover. And I try to read a lot of books or other better written articles on topics that I might not be that familiar with. Whenever I get an idea I write it either on Evernote, as a post title, or on a notebook, if I have one close to me.

Second, once I have an idea, or several, I try to think about what type of article I want to write, and I try to figure out how that article would look like, all in my mind. Usually this involves an internal conversation with an imaginary person in which I explain my idea, which usually results in how my article is written.

Then, I sit down at my computer whenever I have the time, and I begin writing. Here there's one aspect that is quite important and has to be noted - I rarely pay a lot of attention to my grammar or to how well everything is structured. I don't pay attention because my goal is not to write a perfect article on my first try. My goal is to write something. Therefore, if I have multiple ideas for multiple articles, I might write all of them in a single day, without any intention of publishing them all immediately.

Once I'm fairly satisfied with what I wrote, at least at a basic level, I go over everything once more, reading, making sure that the obvious grammatical mistakes are corrected, and trying to figure out if what I wrote makes any sense or not. If I am satisfied on both cases, I move to the final part. If not, I either edit the article to make it look more like something I would be okay with, or I just delete it and focus on checking out the next one, if I already wrote something else, or to writing a new one if I'm still in the mood or if I have the energy.

Finally, once I have an article that I am happy with, that makes sense, and that lacks obvious big grammatical mistakes, I take it and I put it on a website called "NaturalReaders", that uses text to speech to transform my article into an MP3, and then listen to it. I listen to the entire article, paying attention to see if it still makes sense, and correcting the small grammatical mistakes that I overlooked the first time I went through it.

That is the final step. Once I'm done, and if I'm satisfied with what I've got, then I begin to post it either on Hive (mainly), or on Medium (rarely).

The idea of this entire system is a very simple one - I try to write as many articles as I can, as quickly as I can. I try to approach as many ideas as possible. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. I begin by writing anything that comes to mind about whatever ideas I have, as a sketch that I will later go over. If, upon the first revision, I like the end result, I will move to proper editing, and if not, I either rewrite the article, or delete it entirely. Lastly, once I find something I like, I go through the final stage of editing, and I post it.

This helps me write a lot of articles really quickly and to approach ideas fast, without having to spend days or weeks pondering over whether what I've got is good enough or not. The fact that I can type up to 100 words per minute also helps a lot, since I can finish A 600 - 700 words article fairly fast.

All in all, I've been unconsciously doing this for a very long time now. Writing a "sketch" for multiple articles really quickly, then going through them and keeping only what seems to be worth keeping, instead of spending several days trying to make a bad article good helped me quite a lot.

This might, or it might not help others, but I thought I'd mention it, because you never know. Feel free to try it and let me know if it helped you be more productive!

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