BLOGGING: The Process

Whenever I meet someone I know in town, this question always comes my way: "What are you doing during this long holiday?" When I replied, "Oh, I blog," I receive unenthusiastic visages two-thirds of the time. It seems to me that most people are labouring under the delusion that blogging is just an action which eats away precious time, and energy, perhaps. Well, I can confidently tell you that these people (hmm, maybe you are one of them, too?) are terribly wrong.

So, what goes into writing a blog post (my way, since I don't really know what approaches other people are apt to take)? Here goes my five-month-old recipe:

1. Theme. It is extremely crucial to decide on a suitable theme because it determines the popularity of your post. Take for example, the environment. If I am quite right, I touched about the environment for a couple of times in my blog. Guess what? Those posts just weren't (and aren't, I'm sure) popular. This, I trust, is due to the fact that most of the explanations outlined in my posts have already been spelled out in textbooks. Hence, most of the time, I opt for more relaxing themes, like shopping, personal life and humour. Focusing on delicate processes in everyday life helps me to pick the right theme, as I would be able to elaborate more thoroughly when my fingers start dancing on the keyboard.
2. After settling down on a theme, the next step would be to come up with a title. Occasionally, I ask my friends for ideas. Sadly, however, instead of sharing with me titles related to what they experience in everyday life, some of them simply give me titles they came across in essay examinations in the past. A title has to be catchy in order to draw eyes. If you recall, I posted on 'all EARS on deck' (sometime in January or February). It definitely sounds more appealing than 'Listen to Other People's Stories'. In order to invent and innovate (the use of these terms show you that I take blogging very seriously) titles for my posts, I usually sit in front of the desk for no less than five minutes, to make sure that they are of the highest quality my brain can produce (OK, I admit it, I failed miserably several times). When I am truly satisfied with the moniker of my post, I move on to Step 3. 
3. Brainstorm, alone! This is the step that gives me migraine all the time. I keep a little notebook in which I write down the key points that I am going to elaborate on in my posts. The notes provide me with a vague guideline (vague, because I wish to leave some possibilities for corrections in case I changed my mind) of where my post is gravitated to. 
4. I am not a scientist (at least not a qualified one, though I like to experiment with everyday objects around me, creating weird mixtures and solutions in the kitchen and blowing up sockets), but research is definitely very important to me as a blogger. Why trouble myself, you may ask. To be frank, this is to save myself out of even graver troubles. If I were to publish my post without doing any research, this creates an opportunity for me to post something, say a fact, that has been proven wrong by researches worldwide. So, by doing my homework, I get to avoid reprimands and misunderstandings.
5. Survey. I sometimes skip this step, but most of the time, I stick to it. I conduct surveys by conversing with my mum and chatting with my friends. So how does this work? Hmm, take for instance, I am posting something about how people fall in love (Oops! This is a big scoop lying in my 'Draft' section that I am still working on). I navigate to Facebook, scroll down the chat list and look for names that have been targeted by Cupid's arrows. Well, you know who you are...
6. Beef up! After I have done my typing, I usually read though my post again and again to make sure I have done no errors (though as a human, errors are as surely made as the Sun is to rise in the East tomorrow morning). Following some pruning, I try to drop shades of humour consistently from top to bottom to make sure my readers have an enjoyable read (which proves to be a very, very arduous task, and I seldom succeed).

Now, the important question, "Isn't this whole process a waste of time?" No (I am actually bellowing)! I can say that this process is a very helpful David-sharpener. I learn (still learning) to execute tasks under great pressure (trying to come up with good posts, all the while having some of my friends pestering me every now and then to ask for new updates to my blog). It is also good to know that constant reference to the dictionary exposes me to new vocabularies and I have my ability to reason brushed up on from every angle.

It is painful to realise that once this long holiday comes to an end, I will be deprived of my time to come up with so many posts every month. I doubt I can do two per. But for now, I wish to stay close to my sharpener...