About Me – Page 21

Categories: About Me

My Blogging Process

I celebrated six years of blogging at Stephany Writes in September. That feels absolutely crazy to me, mainly because I used to have Blogging ADD where I would constantly start and stop blogs I created. Before committing to this blog, I don’t think I kept a blog running for more than a year before dropping it for a different one.

And yet… here I am. More than six years into this blog, and with no plans to stop anytime soon. I love this space because it’s where I feel most fully myself. When I started blogging here, I was nearly 22 and just beginning my journey through journalism school. There was a lot of complaining (oh, the complaining!) and a lot of sadness. Eventually, as I grew up and graduated college and found more solid footing on who I am and what I want, I found my blogging voice.

So, with six years of blogging under my belt (and really, more than that if you add in my other blogs), I thought it might be fun to talk about my blogging process – how do I come up my blog topics, maintain a consistent schedule, etc?

Let’s dive in!

How do I come up with content ideas?

As you’ll begin to see, my entire blogging process is pretty straightforward and no-frills. I don’t keep a detailed list in Evernote. Instead, I just use my Notes app, where I jot down post ideas as they come to me. Post ideas come to me at the most random times, too. Sometimes, I’ll have a thought as I listen to a podcast or read an article or commute to work or fall asleep at night.

The minute I have the idea, I immediately pull out my phone and jot the thought down. The last content idea that I jotted down was simply the quote: “What you think about me is none of my business.” Someday, I’d like to explore what that quote means to me, especially as someone who deals with self-esteem issues on a daily basis.

Sometimes, the idea is bigger than that, like this:

That one came to me last week as I was reading right before bed. It was just one of those out-of-the-blue moments and I wanted to make sure I wrote down this thought in its entirety, exactly how I feel about it so that I can come back to it at another point in time and dive into my thoughts on the subject in a personal essay.

So, that’s how I come up with post ideas! I like having a long list of random thoughts I’d like to blog about because I can pull from this list as I make my editorial calendar. Speaking of that…

Do I keep an editorial calendar?

Absolutely! I find keeping an editorial calendar is key to maintaining a consistent blogging schedule. Mainly, I try to be a month ahead in my blogging schedule. I use Google Calendar for this, which makes it easy to switch out blog ideas if something comes up and I need to change the post topic I had planned. Here’s what February looks like:

Now that I have and use a paper planner regularly, I only use Google Calendar for my post ideas. You may notice that I’ve only planned for two posts a week and that’s because I have made the decision to move from three posts a week to two, to create space for more novel-writing time. My goal is to write one personal essay, to be published on Tuesday, and then a low-key post for Fridays, like Five for Fridays or a Currently post.

Honestly, without this editorial calendar, I’m not sure if I would be able to maintain a consistent blogging schedule. This is what keeps me in line, motivated to write, and my topics fresh and interesting.

Being able to see what I have planned for the month means I always know what I am writing about the following week, and gives me the time to ruminate on what I want to say before writing the post. So, how do I write my posts? Well…

What does my content writing process look like?

This is the one area that can be all over the place, as I don’t have a set schedule for when I write. It’s just whenever I can make the time for it. But, how do I go from an idea in my Notes app to a published post on my blog? It’s not quite as streamlined as you may think!

For example, let’s discuss my post last week, For the Love of Writing. I wrote a long draft of the post on the Friday before I published it. I spent probably about an hour to an hour and a half free-writing. I didn’t stop to edit it for clarity or grammar or anything like that. I just wrote from the heart. Then, I stepped away from the post for a few days. I came back to it on Sunday night, read through what I wrote and added to it. I stepped away again. On Monday night, I came back to the post for my final round of revisions. I read through it, this time via a blog preview so I could read how it would look on my blog (sometimes, I can catch mistakes more easily that way than just by viewing it through WordPress), fixing mistakes and clarifying statements and deleting sentences that didn’t belong. I found a picture to accompany the post. And, after about an hour of editing, I scheduled it to publish the following day.

Sounds pretty crazy, right? I basically spent more than three hours perfecting just one post. Now, I don’t do that for every post (for example, my Currently in January post took me less than an hour to write), but for personal essays and more in-depth posts, they take me a long time because I want them to say exactly what I meant for them to say. And that takes a lot of writing and revising and editing and revising and writing and editing. Over and over and over again, until the post reads perfect (or nearly perfect) to my eyes.

This is also why I’ve decided to drop down to two posts a week. One, so I can focus on writing more personal essays and more meaningful posts. I want to focus more on quality and less on quantity this year. And two, because I need to create more space in my life for novel writing. With three posts a week, the majority of my weeknights were taken up with blogging. I had to change my schedule because writing my novel is my main priority goal for 2016, so I need to make sure I am really making it my number-one focus.

But that’s basically my blogging process! I do like to include a graphic with my posts, and that can add 10-15 minutes to my process between finding the right photo, uploading it to PicMonkey and adding text, and adding it to the post. I don’t spend time promoting my posts on social media (I’ll usually just tweet about the post once in the morning, and sometimes I don’t even do that), so basically, once the post is published, I’ve moved on to what’s next for me.

Keeping up with my blog can seem like a lot of work to some, but honestly, I only do it because I love it. It’s a hobby that earns me no money (it actually costs me money once I pay my yearly domain and hosting fees, ha), but I have gained so much from this space – new best friends, new outlooks on life, the push to go after my dreams, and mostly, a space to be myself, to be accepted, to be heard.

What does your blogging process look like?

Categories: About Me

For the Love of Writing

I’ve spent the last decade convinced that I didn’t have what it takes to become a published novelist.

After growing up with this dream – my only dream – to be a famous author who wrote fun romances, I suddenly came to a full stop when I realized just how damn hard breaking into the publishing world is.

I stopped writing and essentially stopped dreaming, around the time I finished high school.

I declared an education major in college. And then that was a disaster so when it was time to change majors and my options were English or journalism, I chose journalism.

And now here I am. Nearly five years removed from college, my thirties looming in the distance, still holding on to that dream that just won’t die.

No matter how many times I shove it down, or box it up, or laugh it off, I still want nothing more than to be a published novelist.

More than marriage, more than babies, more than my goal weight, more than a corner office.

I want my name on the spine of the book. I want my words on crisp, opaque pages. I want my heart out in the world.

And after a decade of telling myself I don’t have what it takes, I decided to stop that negative talk.

I do have what it takes. I am good enough.

What is the point of a dream if I don’t chase after it?

There’s been no other path for me than published novelist. After college, I struggled with figuring out my career and what I wanted out of it because a traditional corporate job isn’t what fits me. Writing is what fits me.

Shattering glass ceilings and attending conferences and leading meetings and taking initiative… none of that excites me as much as writing does. Nothing fuels my fire as much as dreaming about publishing that novel.

Dreaming big is scary, and I think that’s part of the reason why I’ve been so hesitant to put in the work to write my novel. It’s why I let procrastination take a front-row seat and allow the negative thoughts their place in my heart.

I am terrified.

I am terrified that I don’t have what it takes, that I’ll never sell a novel, that I’ll put in hours and hours of work and nothing will come of it.

There’s a quote that says, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown talked about that quote on one episode of her Magic Lessons podcast, and instead turned this quote on its head and suggested we start thinking about it differently. As in, “What is worth doing even if I fail?”

In essence, why is success a condition for why we should go after our dreams?

What makes me more of a success: not writing because I’m scared I’ll never get a publishing deal thus rendering all my hard work meaningless? Or writing and working hard and chasing after that dream and living life full-out, knowing that it is all too possible that I’ll never get the publishing deal I want?

Success and being recognized for my craft are not what make me a writer. What makes me a writer is putting in the work.

I want to put in the work. I want to spend hours and hours and hours working on this novel of mine. I want to do it because this is what I love and this is what I was born to do. I don’t want to hold myself back from something that brings me so much joy because I’m fearful it won’t be put out into the world. I don’t want to stop chasing my dream because there’s the potential for failure.

This year, this is my creative year. I am going to work on this novel. Tirelessly. Ceaselessly. With joy. With fulfillment. And probably with some pain and heartache along the way because isn’t that what creation is? Ripping out your heart and slapping it onto the page?

No longer am I going to let fear hold me back from something I’ve wanted for my entire life.

No longer am I going to accept defeat just because success might not be the end result.

My name being on the spine of the book is not the reason why I write.

I write because there’s nothing else I’d rather do.

Categories: About Me

Five Years from Now

On Monday, I took a look back at a letter I wrote to myself five years ago, as I tried to visualize what I wanted my life to look like at 28. I loved looking back at that letter, and I thought there was nothing better I could do but to write another letter to myself – this time as a 28-year-old writing a letter to her 33-year-old self.

Here we go!

Dear 33-year-old Stephany,

You are 33! Somehow, being 33 doesn’t feel as unrealistic as being 28 did when you wrote your previous letter at age 23. In fact, it feels really good. I have a feeling your 30s are going to be grand.

Before I talk about what I am hoping for you, I want to give you a little knowledge of who I am right now. I turned 28 a few weeks ago, and I didn’t celebrate with any parties or big to-do’s. In fact, I spent the majority of my birthday alone before meeting my brother, nephew, and mom for dinner.

At 28, you work at a job you love. You write SEO website content for a living, which may not sound exciting to other people, but you love it. You also love the people you work with, and that makes your job even better.

At 28, you’re single and you don’t date a lot. And you’re okay with that because you don’t feel this pressing need to be in a serious relationship or even married. In fact, you enjoy your independence so much that being in a serious relationship is a little terrifying. But you also know those fears will dissipate once you meet the right person.

At 28, you just moved out on your own for the first time. You live in Tampa, which still doesn’t feel like home, but it’s getting there. You have a wonderful roommate who makes all those fears about living with another person (based on what it was like your freshman year of college) go away. She’s one of your best friends, and I hope she remains that for you.

At 28, you’re writing a novel and I hope it’s a novel you have published, five years from now. Being a published novelist is your biggest dream and you’re putting in the work to make it happen.

Not everything is wonderful, though. You’re overweight and don’t like looking at yourself in the mirror. Living a healthy lifestyle has been harder than you ever expected. You need to work on your money management skills (especially as you just had to have your mom help you pay for new tires for your car, sigh). You still struggle with anxiety and haven’t found a therapist you click with. But I guess the biggest low point of your life right now is that you lost your grandma two months ago. It’s been hard to accept her loss, and there’s such an emptiness in the world without her. It’s hard to believe that when you read this letter in December 2020, she’ll have been gone for five years.

So, what does 28-year-old me wish for the woman reading this letter now? So much, dear one. There is so much I hope and wish for you.

I hope you are living out your dream of being a published novelist. I hope I have used the past five years to buckle down, get my novel written and edited and sent out to agents. I hope you have many novels published with your name on the spine.

I hope you have been lucky in love because the past 28 years have not been so kind to you in that arena. I hope you have found someone you willingly gave up your solo adventures to be with. To me, this means you’ve found a way to let down your walls, let go of your fears, and be fully open to romance and love and passion.

I hope you have maintained your friendships and have cultivated new ones. I hope you still attend book club and have found a community through your church and have deep, fun relationships with women who care about you. There’s nothing more precious than girlfriends. I hope you still understand that.

I hope you live somewhere you love. Maybe that’s a house you own or an apartment you call your own. At 28, home ownership isn’t even on your radar because it feels like too much work. But plans change, right? I don’t know if you still live in Tampa, but I’d venture to say no. I wonder if you’ve moved back to St. Pete after a year or two in Tampa or maybe you’ve taken the plunge and moved somewhere entirely different (living in Savannah has always been a dream).

I hope you’ve taken control of your anxiety and found a therapist you connect with. I hope you’ve gotten a handle on your health, have lost the weight, and feel good about your appearance. I hope you’ve traveled, seen the U.S. cities you’ve wanted to see, and took that trip to Italy that you wanted to take. I hope you’ve been smart with your money, are completely out of debt, and have a healthy savings account that makes you feel secure should an emergency arise.

Above all, dear self, I hope you are abundantly happy with your life. More than achieving goals, more than being who I think you should be, happiness is my ultimate wish for you. I want you to love your life and the people in it. I want you to wake up enthused to start your days and know how very lucky you are to live the life you do.

Love,

Your former 28-year-old self

What do you hope for your life in 5 years?

Categories: About Me

A Letter from the Past

When I was reorganizing my blog earlier this year, I found the below letter that I wrote to my future 28-year-old self at the tender age of 23. Reading through my blog archives from that time makes me cringe a lot because that was a really low point in my life. I don’t think I even realized the extent of it, but now that I’m on the other side of it, I can tell that I was not in a good place.

Reviewing this letter was eye-opening because I achieved so many of the things I wanted to have in my life. But before I get into that, let’s read:

Dear 28-year-old Stephany,

When I think of myself now, five years older than I am while writing this letter, I can’t help but think of how different my life will be. I’ll be on the cusp of turning 30, which feels just plain weird. I still feel perpetually fifteen.

I hope you are happy. I hope you have a job you love and have built a life that fulfills you. You began your 23rd year with very few friends, an unhealthy obsession with food, and low self-esteem. There is a lot I need to learn and a lot I hope to have experienced by the time I turn 28.

What do I want from you? So much. I want you to be healthy, eating food that feels good for your body. I want you to be fit and have found a passionate love for running or any other type of exercise. I want you to be successful, whether it be as a published author or working at a job you love. I want you to be married because frankly, you think about your future husband so much now that still being single five years from now feels defeatist. If you’re not married, I want you to be happy in your singlehood. I want you to not be afraid of starting relationships, be they friendships or romantic relationships. I want your life to be filled with friends and social events. At 23, you’re too filled with fear to do anything about cultivating friendships or being social.

And I want you to remember how you felt as you began Year 2011, at 23. At this time, you were happy, but then again, not-so-happy. You had just begun to explore all these feelings that bombard your mind and body multiple times a day and have hesitantly put a label of “anxiety” on what causes them. You will be seeking therapy in the new year and as much as you want to accept that, it feels a little bit like failure. It feels like you aren’t enough to take care of yourself. You are unhealthy and overweight with an obsession with food that is scary. You badly want to find a love for running and healthy eating so let’s hope 2011 is the year that happens. You don’t have very many friends (but I would venture to say that your amazing blog friends more than make up for that!) and it feels like your family is falling apart, with your 15-year-old twin cousins getting involved in some pretty bad stuff and nobody talking about what’s really going on.

I hope things begin to turn around soon for you. I hope you begin to open up your heart to new relationships, discover what you’re passionate about, and stop hiding from the world. Together, we can do this. We can be happy. We can be healthy. And we can begin to live in freedom.

Love,

Your former 23-year-old self

***

It’s so funny to imagine what I thought life would be like at 28. It feels weird that I’m here. I never really imagined myself being 28. Just like how, right now, I can’t imagine myself being 38.

One of the things that stuck out to me is how I wanted to work at a job I loved. When I wrote this letter, I was entering my last semester of college and working part-time at a preschool. I was miserable and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Five years later, I am working at a job I love and well beyond college. I get to write and edit for a living, learn about the interesting world of online marketing and SEO, and work with completely wonderful colleagues. So yes, younger Stephany, you did achieve that and it feels so good.

Another thing that jumped out at me was wanting to develop friendships. At 23, my friendship circle was minimal. I didn’t go out (like, at all), my high school friendships had fallen away, and I only really hung out with my family. So I’m really pleased that in the five years since this letter, I have connected with some truly wonderful women. I joined a book club, which was terrifying, but I ended up meeting some of my closest and most cherished girlfriends through it. These girls get me and let me be myself. Through work, I met more wonderful ladies, one of whom I connected with on such a deep level that we moved in together and I consider her to be one of my best friends. And how can I forget the friendship I have with my mom? It has grown deeper through the years, and there’s nobody I enjoy spending time with more than her. So friendships – another check mark. My social network might not be as extensive as most, but it’s perfect for me.

At 23, I wanted to be married when I was 28, but I’m really, really happy that I’m not. I’m content in being single and happy that I have this time in my life to explore what I want and to be completely selfish with my time. I also don’t spend all my time thinking about my future husband anymore. I go on dates when I want to, but mostly try not to take this area of my life too seriously. Love will happen when it happens!

But there is an area of my life that I haven’t yet gotten a handle on and that is my health. Over the past five years, my weight has gone up and not down, and it’s a constant area of struggle for me. But lately, I’ve found myself less inclined to worry so much about it. I don’t want to be someone who needs to be a certain weight in order to be happy. I’m trying to accept myself as I am right now, knowing I do need to lose weight for health reasons, but also that it’s okay that I’m not where I want to be. What I want more than to look a certain way is to feel better about myself and feel good about the choices I make. A number on the scale is arbitrary, but feeling good about myself is an exceptional way to live.

So to little 23-year-old Stephany who felt like the world was on her shoulders and life was one difficult day after another, I’m pleased to tell you that you are happy and love the life you have built for myself. It may not look exactly the way you envisioned it, but it’s still wonderful little life.

What do you think your former self from five years ago would think of your life today?

Categories: About Me

What I Learned From Writing 50,000 Words in 28 Days

Well, I officially completed NaNoWriMo 2015! I wrote 50,000 words for my novel in just 28 days, and it was so much fun. A lot of work, but I can’t deny how much fun I had with the challenge. When I began the month, I was 10,000 words into my novel and now I have nearly 67,000 words written. Since I want this book to be around 90,000-100,000 words, I still have a ton of writing to do, but I’m hoping to maintain my daily writing habit to finish the novel before the year is over.

I learned a lot in November, about writing and about maintaining the motivation to complete a long challenge, and I thought I would use today to talk about some of those lessons learned. These lessons will be broad enough to hopefully be helpful for anyone embarking on any kind of journey, not just writing.

Accountability is key.

Most times when I attempt NaNoWriMo (I’ve tried it five times, won it twice), I give up quickly because I don’t talk about it much. I may mention it on the blog, but not anywhere else. This year, I told my writing partner what I was attempting and would check in with her frequently about how the challenge was going. We also met once a week to write. Knowing I had to check in with her and having her cheer me on this whole month was such an important part of maintaining my focus.

So, whether you’re writing a novel or training for a marathon or searching for a new job, enlist a buddy. They can give you motivation. They can help you out by going on a training run with you or reading over your resume. Basically, an accountability partner is an external support to keep you going.

It’s okay to get behind

I got behind on the second day of NaNoWriMo. I had had a bad day and when I came home from work, the last thing I wanted to do was write. So, instead, I laid on the couch and watched TV. My manuscript sat untouched. It was only day two and I was already behind… yikes. Instead of letting that get me down, I told myself I could easily make up the words throughout the week. And it took me a while to get on pace, but I did. Normally, a setback like that, especially so quickly into the challenge, would have demotivated me so much, I would have quit. But this time, I didn’t allow something so small to defeat me. It taught me that it’s okay to get behind, to falter a bit, to lose focus. No matter if that comes in the beginning, the middle, or the end, it’s all okay.

Miss a training run? Fall off your eating plan for a day? Take a few days off from working on your side hustle? It’s all okay. It’s not the end of the world. You can get back on track. Just remember why you are doing what you are doing and you’ll find your motivation once again.

Shitty days will happen

Some days, the writing felt so effortless and everything I wrote felt good and moved the story along. Then, there were other days where the writing felt difficult and I would look back on what I wrote with my nose wrinkled in disgust. The sentences felt cheesy, the plot off balance. That? Is called writing a novel. No writer, no matter how experienced, has a super successful day every single day. Some days are just shitty, plain and simple. That’s just part of the process of writing a novel.

You won’t be excited about your goal every single day. That’s just the way it is. The journey of achieving a goal features many, many boring, unsexy steps. These are the steps nobody sees, where everything is a slog and you may start thinking that you’re not cut out for whatever you’re trying to achieve. You are. You are more than capable. Shitty days happen, and you just have to be prepared to break through it.

I think one of the lessons I learned most during NaNoWriMo, though, is how much I love writing fiction. Each day was such an adventure and even when it was difficult, it was still so interesting and fun to work through the hard parts. I’m so excited to finish my novel and spend all of 2016 editing it. And then? I aim to get this one published. Oh yeah.