A dear friend of mine emailed me, asking me a few questions about a recent post…

• How do you remember your travels?
• Do you take notes — paper, electronic, voice recordings?
• What process do you use to create your posts?

Well, I started to give her a simple answer, and it blossomed into a bit of a dissertation. After sending off the email, I thought the process might also be interesting to some of my other readers, so here it is.

CREATING a POST

1. I keep zero written notes of any kind when I travel. I don’t use voice recordings either.
2. If I think I might need a memory prompt, I take a picture of signage or a scene. That’s it.
   Could be a self-guided tour-sign about lizards or lions, a road sign, a building front, whatever. These, and my ‘regular’ photos, are my travel notes. Karin always looks at me puzzled when I take a snapshot of a road sign or non-descript scene, and I smilingly quip “story shot”.
3. I begin the post (at home) by going through photos, and I pull out the duds (poor exposure, blurred, pocket shots, etc). This is kind of a warm-up, clean-up phase. It’s common for me to shoot 100-200 pix a day or so, and I weed out about 10% in this culling. For Israel (for example), my final collection was 912 images, 98% of which will never see any kind of publication.
   

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4. After the initial “weeding”, I then go through the pix again with a completely different mindset, looking for ones worth sharing. As they pop up, I edit some of the more noteworthy ones that I think I’ll use. I use a combination of cropping, tonal adjustment, and color adjustment to give the picture as much “snap” as the original scene.
5. Then I WAIT until I’m in the mood (VERY important step). This has occasionally taken as long as a month or two.
   

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6. Finally, creative mood in hand, I start writing — usually a short intro, then a couple of sections that are “in my mind”. I need to set the tone pretty solidly, both for my readers and for myself. Sometimes its a time-line narrative theme; sometimes it’s more of a carousel approach, like the Israel post.
7. I add photos to the text, selecting additional pix and editing them as I go. Sometimes, the writing suggests photos, and sometimes the photos suggest writing. I go back and forth, filling and back-filling, editing and re-editing.
8. As the post takes shape, I organize some headings, to help separate topics and focus a reader’s interest. I usually don’t know what type or content the headings will be until well after I start writing. Then, the character of the overall theme emerges.
9. Every few paragraphs, topics, and photos, I take an “overview” to see how it’s all knitting together. I fill in extra detail as necessary.
   With every overview, I often notice a ‘gap’ in the content, and I create a new section to fill it in.
10. MEMORY — mine’s like Swiss cheese. Of all the content that I present in a blog post, I’d estimate that only 70%-85% comes out of my head. For the rest, I do tons of web research to refresh my memory and also flesh out my writing.
    

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11. SYNERGY — one section will remind me of another, and I’ll go back and forth, embellishing.
12. Sometimes I don’t have the right photo for some text, and I’ll go get a generic photo of some kind, off the web. I’m a copyright-responsible author: all images in my posts either have to be my own, or must be license-free. So it can take me quite a while to find the right pic.
13. Opinions and impressions — sometimes these are the first things I write about, sometimes the last. I try not to get too wordy or preachy. But I also try hard to put some color and depth into what are, in the end, just snapshots and captions really.
14. Humor — Yes, humor can add some dimension to otherwise dry text. And I have a naturally jocular, even snarky, nature, so it’s easy to come up with funny thoughts. I’m always thinking of a “twist”, but I’m also super-conscious of my G-rated audience — sadly (or fortunately?) 2/3 of my quips and jokes don’t make the final edition.
15. Edit, review, edit, review — 2 or 3 times minimum, before it’s all done. Re-write stuff, replace duplicate words, move sections around, make it readable, make it flow.
16. All the above is done off-line, using an outstanding blog editor called Opensource Live Writer (OLW). This is extremely useful when I’m off in the boonies, but it’s also just a better editor than anything I have online in WordPress. When I’m near completion, I transfer my working draft to my blog. At this point, I’m locked in to finishing it up online, so this step can only happen when I have a good data connection.
17. I add categories, tags, and featured image, and do a pseudo-publish Preview. I check the Preview for formatting issues and overall appearance, and correct them as needed.
18. Last step — I co-read the Preview page with Karin. She’s always my first reader, and she always has useful comments and suggestions. Then, a few more edits, and it’s “FINISHED”.
    

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Final sequence: Publish — post a link on FB — and relax.

It takes me about twice as long to select and edit photos, as it does to write the actual text. Even if I include all the review/edit time, I’m still a much faster writer than I am a photo editor.

The whole process, all told, for a post like the Israel trip, takes 12-20 hours, usually over several days. I’m not one of those authors who can sit at a keyboard and bang things out for six or eight or ten hours. In fact, after a couple of hours I’m flogged, and I always need a break. Rarely, if ever, will I put in more than four hours in a single day.

I don’t earn any compensation from these efforts, other than my own satisfaction and a few complimentary comments now and then. I don’t have ads or links or an Amazon store or anything. Call it a Labor of Love <grin>. If/when it stops being fun, well…. I’ll stop doing it.

As always, thanks for reading,
G.