I’ve spent quite a few years writing my blog posts. I started back in 2014 with the idea of creating posts to help promote my short novel, Floating in Space. Now, 730 posts later, I often wonder how I might have gone on had I achieved my schoolboy ambition of becoming a journalist. It’s hard enough writing a new blog post every week but what if I’d have had to have written something for a newspaper every day? That would have been a pretty tall order. Come to think of it, writing a post every week can be a bit of a challenge. Anyway this week’s post is about how I actually go about writing a blog post.
What is quite handy for me is that I haven’t restricted myself in a way other writers who belong to a particular niche have. For instance if this was a cinema blog I could only write about films, just like a book blogger can only write about books or a cycling blogger must confine himself to cycling. For me I write about anything that happens to take my fancy, although usually I stick to books, films, the occasional Formula One post and things that happen in my life.
Most of the time I’ll come up with an idea for a blog post while lying in bed. Not only that, I’ll also begin to write the blog in my head, so that when I’m fully awake I’ll have a sort of template in the back of my mind all ready to write out. Sometimes that process can go on for about a week, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter but at some point I’ll need to actually start writing. If I can’t get to my laptop I’ll sometimes jot some ideas down in my notebook.
The notes you can see in the picture here are for one of my frequent film connections posts in which I try to connect various films, actors, directors and personalities together and use those random links to tell a few cinema stories to my readers. In this one I’ve tried to connect Douglas Fairbanks to Marlon Brando.
After the note making process I’ll usually need to drink tea so I’ll drag myself up out of bed and into the kitchen where thoughts of food will begin to enter my mind. I like to start the day with a combination of various things and I’m now talking about eggs, bacon, sausages and hot buttered toast.
A good breakfast is important for a blog writer and after scoffing some food I’ll usually get down to checking my emails and scheduling the posting of numerous links to my blogs in places like Instagram, Facebook, X and so on.
After that more tea is generally a good idea and I like to leave blogging alone for a few hours and watch a little television. A good World War II documentary or a classic film noir are the sort of things I like to watch when I have time to myself in an afternoon. After a little TV entertainment I usually find that the new blog post has settled down in my head and I’m ready to start work on my laptop and get a first draft down on paper. Well not actually paper but Microsoft word. I’ll work on the post a number of times throughout the day and in fact throughout the week, then when I’ve finally got something I’m happy with, I’ll transfer it over to WordPress.
Then it’s time for another brew. I don’t think I can really stress enough the importance of a good cup of tea in the blog creation process. I drink numerous cups of tea throughout the day and it gives me a break from typing but it’s important to relax and I always think it’s quite fascinating how the post develops while I’m actually focussed on something else, reading a book or watching TV while the blog post matures a little up there in the old grey matter.
When I’m ready to once again focus on the post, I find that most of the time something new will come to me, a new idea or even just a new way of looking at the subject and then I’ll just update the post when I sit down again with my laptop.
Now that the post is on WordPress I can access it on my iPad and that little change from laptop to iPad always gives me a new perspective so I’ll refine it a little more before passing it to Liz for a quality check and final proofreading. This is the point where numerous embarrassing errors are spotted like spelling, grammar, repeated words, punctuation and so on. Then I’ll add the graphics, pictures and videos and everything is ready for my publishing deadline of 10am on Saturday.
For the graphics I mostly use a simple site like Quotescover but when I’m feeling really artistic and creative I’ll use Adobe or Canva. Sometimes I’ve even asked chat GTP or Claude to produce a graphic. I’ve not always been totally happy about those results and usually I prefer something I’ve actually worked on myself although recently I asked Claude for a new graphic for the website and it came up with this one which I think is rather good.
Not long ago I was watching the classic film Treasure of the Sierra Madre. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a bunch of Americans prospecting for gold down in Mexico. The leader of the prospectors played by Walter Huston in the film, explains the value of gold in this way: A thousand men go searching for gold. One man finds an ounce of gold. His small find represents not only his hard work but the work of the other 999 men who were unsuccessful. Gold is worth so much because of the effort that went into finding it. Now I could argue the same point about this blog, that even though it is free to read this humble post, it’s actually worth quite a lot because of the hours, weeks and sometimes months of effort that went into preparing it, writing it, editing it, making the videos shown here and designing and producing the graphics that adorn this and all my many other posts.
Of course once the post is finished and ready for publication that isn’t the end. Next I’ll start planning where and when to publish links to the post. On a weekday I’ll publish links on all my usual social media places, Facebook, X, Instagram and so on. On a weekend I publish a post every two hours over on X and I’ve started making short videos that go out on Instagram and TikTok which have pulled in a lot of new readers and followers.
So as you read this post you now might be thinking, wow, what a great deal you’re getting! All that effort, just for you. Should you click on one of the links for Floating in Space or A Warrior of Words or Timeline and maybe buy a copy? Personally, I’d say ‘yes, you should’ but even if you don’t you can catch a new blog post every Saturday at 10 am UK time and don’t forget to have a scroll through all those previous posts too.
New post published, now I can relax. The only thing is, what shall I write about next week?
It takes me a while to get used to sleeping in our motorhome. It’s only small and there is a little dip in the bed just at the point of my lower back which has given me some backache in the past but lately I’ve learnt to either avoid it or just live with it. Another issue that affects our sleep is the way the van is parked and parking properly is very important. A tilt to the left and Liz will be rolling over and crowding me. Over to the right and I’ll be crowding her. A slight tilt forward and we tend to slide off our pillows and down the bed. If we have to have a tilt it’s better to tilt back toward our pillows but we do have chocks which we can slip under the wheels to level us up. My place on the bed is over by the window and there is no way out for me except by climbing over Liz so one of my rules is to not have beer prior to going to bed. Otherwise I’ll be waking in the night wanting to wee and struggling to get out.
When evening comes we will have sorted out a place to stay the night. I usually get out our little gas barbecue and we will cook some sausages, burgers and maybe a steak to have with our salad. A glass of red wine is always good to wash the food down with and after clearing up I’ll go back to what I’ve written earlier and develop it a little and tidy it up.
Sometimes you make a big mistake and don’t realise it until months later. Many weeks ago we checked our diaries and searched through ferry websites looking for the best deal to travel over to France but it was only a few days prior to departure that we realised we had booked to travel on the August bank holiday. Well, how bad could it be? Really?
I’ve always rather liked Kenneth Williams, the slightly over the top star of many a Carry On film as well as many radio comedy shows, however it did feel rather odd reading his private thoughts through his diary, although sometimes it was hard to keep track of what was happening. In a lot of the diary entries Kenneth refers to people by their initials rather than their name. The habit of using initials can be rather annoying as the editor will mention in one of the many footnotes that SB for instance refers to his friend and fellow performer Stanley Baxter. Later on, SB will turn up again and I find myself flipping back through the footnotes because I have forgotten who SB was.
Albert Speer was Hitler’s armaments minister and favoured architect and this book is made up of diary entries he had secretly smuggled out of Spandau prison where he was incarcerated for 20 years after the Second World War. Speer admits he was one of those people seduced by the power of Hitler’s personality. Looking back at Hitler today in grainy old black and white films, it is hard to understand how this strange and dour man who ranted and raved while speech making could seduce anyone, however many have testified to the startling power of his personality. I remember watching that interesting BBC documentary ‘The Nazis: A warning from History’. In one segment various people were interviewed who declared their youthful love for Hitler; a young girl who looked into his eyes and saw goodness or an old man who testified he had once seen the great side of Hitler. Sadly Hitler let them down and many more like them. Speer maintained that he knew nothing of concentration camps and the final solution but author Gitta Sereny claimed in her book Speer: His battle with Truth that Speer knew more than he let on.
This is the first of Michael Palin’s diaries and it’s been pretty interesting, especially being a fan of the TV show Monty Python. Anyway, Palin started his diaries soon after packing in smoking. Perhaps it was a way of helping get over his tobacco addiction, or perhaps not. The diaries also begin just as Monty Python, the comedy TV show, was starting and Palin mentions this in his introduction, his aim not to record the start of the ground breaking comedy but more to record things about his new family, his wife having recently given birth to their first child.
My diaries are definitely not for publishing. Looking back at them I notice that whenever something interesting has happened to me I have never written about it at the time, it has always been some time later when I have set down my feelings about the incident, whatever it may have been. The diary may be a confessional for some people but for me, as I said earlier, I started writing a diary as a way of making myself write when I couldn’t think of anything else to write about. In the early 2000’s I started writing a diary on my laptop, only to lose all my recollections from 2005 to 2006 when the file somehow became corrupted and refused to open. I was quite excited when the latest version of Microsoft Word came out because it gives you the option to repair a damaged file. Alas, that option would not work on my diary file. Then of course there are my big boxes of pre-2000 diaries. What shall I do with this lot I wonder? Will they add something to social history or grace the rubbish tip when I’m gone?
I’ve always been a writer, even as a school kid I was writing stories and screenplays. I used to write scripts and do all the casting. Not sure whether Steve McQueen would have appreciated the roles I was planning for him though.
Well, more of the same really. I’ve begun to work on a follow up novel to Floating in Space but a novel is hard work and I sometimes wonder if I’m up to the task. Even my latest book, Timeline, which is just a collection of stories and blog posts was pretty hard work. The big problem is just me, being motivated and just getting myself geared up to work and write. Writing short stories is much more enjoyable and I’m really pleased at how my stories have turned out. A few are available for readers to download and enjoy, just click on the download link above.
I did read some news snippets over the previous weekend indicating Starmer was planning to resign on the Monday but I pretty much dismissed that as just a rumour without any background. Of course journalists have their contacts within government and certainly whoever started that rumour off must have had a good source because he was proved fully correct.
Occasional time on your own though can be good. It gives you time to think and do things that perhaps annoy your usual close partner. Playing music for instance or watching TV shows that your partner does not like. When you are alone you can eat early or eat late. You can get up early or you can get up late. You can even sit in the garden and read without any need to go back inside until you are good and ready. You can indulge in foods that are bad for you and no one will know. That cream cake that you should not have eaten is a secret between you and your inner self but you and you alone will know had good it tasted. Same goes for that Spam sandwich.
He gives advice on screenwriting and tells a number of film making/writing anecdotes. One I found particularly interesting was how directors want rewrites incorporating their ideas for the film. Then a big star comes aboard but doesn’t like it that his character dies at the end. New rewrite and the character is not killed. Then the star leaves the project and another star arrives. Cue new rewrite, this time the star wants to die but the director leaves and the new director wants to bring his own writer on board.
It’s always nice to see my regular post published on a Saturday at 10am but almost as soon as it goes out into the world of the internet the first thing I think about is what shall I do next?
