My Blogging Process: a Peak Behind the Curtain at Retrospective Lily

Hi, friends. In today’s post, I’ll give you a glimpse behind the scenes and share my blogging process with y’all.

If you haven’t noticed, I post once a week on Friday afternoons. At any given time, I have 10-20 rough drafts hanging out, waiting for their turn on the metaphorical conveyor belt that moves from “rough draft” to “published post.” Speaking of which, I need to accept that I will never publish some of my old drafts and just delete them already. I’m hoarding certain ones with the unrealistic thought, “Maybe someday…”

ANYWAY, I write about one draft a week, but I squeeze in more if time permits it throughout the week. Do I really need to write that many? Nope. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the creativity muscle needs to be flexed regularly to maintain its strength. Also, having an array of drafts “sitting on go” allows me to publish posts during super busy weeks.

I keep a list of ideas that I reference when I sit down to write, and I add ideas to this list all the time as they randomly hit me. Fun fact: I have to drop what I’m doing to jot down ideas immediately or I forget them. [I once got inspired while driving and forgot the idea by the time I reached my destination.]

Sometime between Sunday and Tuesday, I’ve decided which of my rough drafts to place on the conveyor belt for that week. My first objective is to edit the initial rough draft. Some drafts come out almost flawlessly from the start, while others require more thought refinement before I can edit for grammar/structure/sentence flow. [The latter happens worse with old rough drafts because my thoughts on things evolve with time.]

I spend the first half of the week editing the rough draft. The process loosely follows this pattern–thought refinement, grammar refinement, highlighting and italicizing sentences. The grammar refinement takes a few go-rounds, and thought refinement often happens incidentally as I edit grammar. However, this is the general overview of my editing process.

By Wednesday or Thursday, I’m ready to focus on aesthetics. I find free images (Pixabay, Unsplash) to sprinkle throughout the post that relate to things I’m saying, and I start making my featured image on Canva. Fun fact: the font I use in a featured image is a deliberate, careful decision. If you look at my blog page via my website, or if you open my profile in the WordPress Reader, you will notice that font is an intentional choice; a beachy photo is paired with a summer-y font, a post about writing a letter has a legible but elegant cursive font that evokes the thought of writing by hand, etc. I also tint the photos and add little stickers–both to contribute to my brand aesthetic. [The next Blogging Tips & Tricks will focus on photo editing tips. 🙂 ] I just updated the featured image for these posts to better match my aesthetic, which has refined over time.

On Friday, the post is ready to go, so I obsessively read it over a couple times, combing it for previously-overlooked errors. When the post goes live, I check it AGAIN and, about half the time, I somehow find a mistake. So I go fix it immediately and wash my hands of it. Then, I wait for y’all to encourage me with your love and support. 🙂

So, there you have it–a glimpse of my blogging process. Thanks for reading! How often do you post, and what does your process look like? Let me know in the comments.

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