Writing through the Seasons

As of December 21st, the shortest day of the year, I already look forward to the start of spring, my favorite season. One of the first moments I cherish is when I hear birds singing again early morning; or when the sun is shining and it's getting comfortable again to be outside. I do my best to catch those moments and enjoy them consciously. It makes me happy.

Trees and plants blossom again, demonstrating nature's resilience after a long, cold winter. All this is due to our planet completing its annual trip around the sun.

That's when I realized I had also completed a one-year journey: on April 5th, I published my first article for the Scrumpy Dad newsletter.

Since then, I have published a newsletter article every Thursday. I even managed to keep up my routine when on holiday without annoying my wife (or at least I like to think so).

Looking back, publishing 52 articles sounds like much work. And in a way, it was. However, it was also much fun most of the time.

Here is what I learned in one year of writing the Scrumpy Dad newsletter...

Inspiration

Every week, I needed to figure out what to write about. Ideas that popped up at random moments I put on my content backlog. Sometimes, I picked one of these topics, especially when I needed inspiration. But most often, a relevant topic would present itself because of some current event or recent activity. Such actual topics always provide the best motivation for me.

Writing

When I want to write an article, I learned just to start writing. I dump all my thoughts about the topic of choice. I don't focus on perfect sentences or structure; I just keep writing. This helps me get into the flow, which triggers new ideas and thoughts, adding to the story content.

Rewriting

In the beginning, I wrote my articles on Wednesday evening. That caused much stress to get them ready for publication the next day, so I quickly adapted the routing to have a first draft on Monday evening and then take my time to polish it up on Tuesday or Wednesday. That way, I would also come up with better headlines. So, allow articles to simmer a bit.

Structured creativity

Over time, I developed a simple template to guide my writing process. Whenever I start a new article, I first write down four headings:

• Message: what is the key message for the reader
• Titles: a list of ideas for a catchy title
• Post: a text for the introductory LinkedIn post
• Body: the article itself

I always start with the Message and some first Titles that come to mind. The Post text comes last after I'm done with the Body text.

Algorithm magic

It's still a mystery to me how LinkedIn actually works, and I don't really care. Although it is interesting to look at the analytics, I found it hard to conclude why specific articles score higher than others. There are plenty of people out there who claim to have cracked the latest version of the algorithm. But I don't want to write for an algorithm. I write passionately about what interests me, and I trust my articles will find their way to like-minded people like yourself. (or maybe I'm just getting old...?)

Appreciation

It is always great to hear from people who have read one of your articles, whether via reaction, comment, direct message, or in person. So, thank you all for hanging out with me and reading my newsletter articles over the past year!

Is there a particular article that you like best? And why? Looking forward to hearing from you...

Take care and till next time!

Kind regards,

Herman / Scrumpy Dad

I help people stay loyal to their goals and values and create more happiness in their lives.

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