Word Count

Writing about things you are interested in is fun. Going to work and writing a certain word count every day, about something you may or may not be all that interested in, is not so easy.

One person asked me if I write a certain number of words per day. I have never thought about that. I usually write a story about something I’m interested in. The word count of the story varies.

My blog posts are between 500 and 1500 words long. My articles are usually between 1000 and 3000 words. Once I get a story finished, I usually stop writing and start doing other things.

This article is about writing. Its about your word count, the business of writing, and a little bit of introducing my writing persona, to help inspire you to cultivate your own writing style and some technical ideas about the structure of good stories.

Practice being more disciplined and productive. I like the idea of writing a certain number of words per day. Remember to write about your audience’s agenda and not about what you are doing.

Being a Prolific Writer

Get in the habit of writing a certain number of words every day. I realize that there are a lot of other things you have to work on, to be a webmaster and operate your business. Right now, in the early stages of building your website, focus on creating lots of high quality content.

Getting in the habit of writing is one of your keys to success. The more you write, the better at writing you will be. Do a lot of research and make sure your stories are well written stories full of valuable content.

Think about what your audience wants and needs. Work on making your stories entertaining. My audience is trying to figure out how to earn a living working in your own home office. You’re either making your own products and trading them in the free market, or you’re trading other people’s products in the free market place.

Right now, I’m writing this story about being a teacher and building a website that serves as your classroom. Adding a lot of content other than written stories, such as photos, pod casts, and videos is a good idea.

Once you get about 30 really good stories published. You might want to start creating videos to compliment the written stories. Don’t stop writing stories, just start making images and videos to sprinkle around in your written stories.

Turn your website into an art gallery, full of your stories, photos, and videos. Practice writing short little blurbs about a subject, so you can lead your audience through your website to your most wanted response.

Keep your stories organized into Articles and Blog Posts. Articles are longer, in depth articles and white papers about a subject. You can use Scribus to create PDF documents your audience can download. Blog posts are news about current events.

I’ve noticed that a lot of times, I’ll start writing a story. It just does not flow out smoothly. Then, I go do something else for a while. I come back to the story the next day, or a year later, and out comes a pretty good story.

Outline of Headers

Writing your outline first, using your list of section headings and then filling in the content under each heading, is a good way to get stories that flow logically from one idea to the next, rather than rambling stories, wandering back and forth through your subject matter.

Select 5 or 10 section headers and write them into your text editor as a list. Write a story about the topic under each header.

Your first draft will not be your last one. So don’t get stuck, worrying about writing correctly or search engine optimization or any of that stuff. Just write a good story. You’ll edit and polish it later.

Even your title and headers can be edited and polished. Search Engine Optimization specialists say that, good headers will make your stories more attractive to search engines. They also help you organize your story into a logical progression of ideas, which helps your audience understand what you are saying.

If your audience skims through and reads your headings, which happens often, then you want your headings to tell a story. Your headings are facets of your story. Each facet is a story and all the facets fit together into one diamond of a story.

Adding Media

Organize your images well. Store them in your file system, by camera and date. When you use an image in a story, move it to a directory that has everything for that story. The text. All the images. And any other content or metadata that belong to that story.

Open your images in Gimp. Under Image, select scale the image, adjust 6000 pixels wide down to 1000 pixels wide. Double click on the link to get the height to properly match the width. Then, under file, click on export and export as jpg. I usually add _2 to the end of the photo number. When I close Gimp I select discard changes, that way I save the original picture and the scaled image.

Click on the x to insert a block into Gutenberg Block editor with Kadence Pro theme and select insert image icon. You can upload the image directly into your webpage. I usually navigate to my Media Library and upload them there, so I can name the photo and add alternative text.

Read a lot. Observe. Look at different author’s writing styles. Get very knowledgeable about your niche and start writing informative and entertaining stories about that subject. Pay attention to your word count.

Insert some pictures that match the content of your story. Make sure you gather the information about the author of the art and insert that credit into your web-page. I usually insert credits at the bottom of my stories.

Do not use too many advertisements, especially pop up ads. Nothing is more irritating than being interrupted by a banner ad popping up while you’re trying to read a story.

Edit images in Gimp to get them ready for WordPress. Use the Tools >Transform Tools to adjust the Align, Rotate and Perspective of the image. Use the Image > Scale Image tool to adjust the size of the image for WordPress. Changing the 6000px width to 1200px or 400px works fine. Make sure the height and width stay linked.

Adding images to WordPress is fairly easy. Just select the image block. Select Media Library and then, upload pictures there. Enter the metadata for each picture in the Media Library form.

Select the EmbedPress icon to add videos. You have to install the EmbedPress plugin to use it. Once you get everything set up, it is really easy to embed videos into your website. It is not hard to get it set up either.

Use your photos and videos to make your website more visually attractive and valuable. Use your smart phone, Open Broacasting System (OBS) and Kdenlive to produce valuable content to compliment your word count.

Your Voice

Be yourself. Of course you want to write good English prose, or whatever your native language is. Just do so in your own voice. Be real. No posers allowed.

I guess you can be a poser, if you want to. You can cultivate a diverse assortment of personas. That could be constructively useful. I recommend being yourself. Whatever you do, be helpful and harmless.

I’ve been toying with this idea that I am a 21st century shaman. A North American wizard. I am a holistic healer and teacher, a neurolinguistic life coach. I study human consciousness and human nature and civilization for the fun of it.

I teach people how to live happy, healthy and wealthy. I’m not a doctor or lawyer. I’m just an individual freeman, a professional writer, telling stories to my family, the human race.

You are going to have your own persona, which will depend on your own life experience. Cultivate that. You are the star of your own show. Make it a good show. Love learning and teaching. Make your education entertaining.

I’ve learned a lot by reading a lot. I do not have a lot of academic education. I just read a lot. I study science, history, philosophy and religion.

I’ve studied eastern philosophy as much as I’ve studied western philosophy, which probably is not all that much, compared to a philosophy major. I’ve studied physics, astronomy and cosmology fairly extensively. History has always been one of my favorite subjects.

Ever since I started kicking my drug addiction, back in the 1990s, I’ve been studying human nature and civilization. I’ve studied biology, physiology and psychology fairly extensively. And I’m talking about reading books written by the original discoverers and creators of these sciences, such as William Marston, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Abraham Maslow, Ivan Pavlov and many others.

I’ve read the I Ching four times. The Tao once, I’ve read Confucius’ book, The Analect and Mencius’s writings. I’ve studied Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayur Vedic Medicine and a variety of western medical sciences. I’ve studied ancient Indian, Chinese and European philosophy. I’ve studied the Druid way, which is my own ancestral way.

One of the advantages of my non-academic education is the absence of the socialist political spin, which is so blatantly obvious in academic settings. I’ve also read the Federalist Papers and many other stories by and about about the founding fathers of the USA. I definitely favor the capitalist entrepreneur culture, not the socialist one. Capitalism, democracy and human rights are good ideas. Freedom, equality and justice for all are universal human rights. Seek the unvarnished truth. Seek the truth and the truth will set you free (Jesus, 30).

One of the disadvantages of my non-academic strategy is that, I have some glaring omissions in my education. For one thing, I wish I understood more about math and how to operate, maintain and repair my computers. Another one is the social aspects of academic education. Lack of credentials is also a serious limitation.

I am thankful that I do have a world class education and this outside the mainstream perspective is very valuable in many ways. For one thing, I have a monopoly on my perspective. I may be way ahead of my time, but these ideas are not unreasonable ideas.

That’s all these stories really are. Reasoning with you about how to create wealth for yourself and your community and how to cultivate one universal commonwealth, throughout human nature and civilization, in the process.

I do not want anyone to grow up in a drug infested, dangerous and violent culture like I did. I want to make the world a better place. I want to help us all create a safe, clean and decent society for everyone, everywhere.

I’ve read the Holy Bible 5 time from cover to cover, the Holy Quran 4 times. I’ve read the Bahgavad Gita several times. I’ve read the Upanishads and the Puranas. I’ve even read the Zoroastrian Zend Avesta.

So, this persona that I’m putting out, of a modern day wizard, is not just wishful thinking. It is a result of reading hundreds of books about a very wide variety of subjects.

I used to like reading science fiction books about witches and wizards, until I found out that my biological father was a psychic channeler. He eventually demonstrated his abilities to me. I got a very loud and clear message, that psychic channeling is not something I should be playing with.

I am a Baha’i. I hope and believe that Baha’u’llah is Who He says He is. I want the Most Great Peace to come, gradually and peacefully and as quickly as possible. All of my stories are intended to help make it so.

I started building this Internet based teaching business when I was kicking drugs and recovering from my addiction. I want to produce something to help people like me, who did not have a healthy family to grow up in, or a lot of academic education.

I teach people who have any kind of physical, mental, or spiritual handicap to recover and thrive, for as many chances as it takes. I am a trauma release specialist. If you fail, then get back up, get back in the game and keeping striving to improve yourself and human nature and civilization.

Who are you?

Making Your Stories Shine

Get in the habit of writing your stories in your favorite text editor. I like writing with Kate. It is very easy to use. If you are writing books, then learn how to use Kile and Latex. Kile is fairly easy to use, Latex has a fairly steep learning curve. Kile is the KDE application you can use to produce Latex documents. It is well worth the time and effort to be able to write and publish all kinds of professional documents.

Set Kate up, side by side with Dolphin, so you can see and organize your files and write stories on the same virtual desktop. I’ve done a little research and figured out that, as long as I have the editor set up in this size and shape, then, when the mini-map gets to the bottom, I’ve got a word count of about 2500. That is just about right for a website article.

Right now, I have the KDE Tiling Window Manager enabled. So applications always open full screen and then split the screen whenever a new application is opened. I like the Tiling Window Manager is some cases. Other times, I don’t really like it. I’ll probably switch back to floating window management soon.

You can write a good blog post in a couple of hours. Its not just writing the story, its writing the story and getting it all dressed up to look good and function well on your website.

It may take you several days to get a good article written. Keep filling in those sections. Get all the sections written and then go through the whole story and clean up all the typos and misspellings and rearrange some paragraphs and delete some of them.

Edit your story. Make it a good story. Make it valuable for your audience. Write your story as if you are talking to a friend.

Sometimes you’ll notice that you need to rearrange your sections. WordPress’ Gutenberg editor makes it very easy to do that.

Keep thinking about helping your audience. The people reading your stories have their own agenda. Some of them will be interested in your agenda, but most of them are busy with their own agenda.

Your audience either wants to learn something or they want to be entertained. Preferably both. Make sure your stories are substantive, that they add value for your audience. Make sure they are easy to understand. Make them easy to read.

Don’t waste your audience’s time. Repetition is a good teaching tactic, but don’t over do it. Concentrate on the one most important factor, your audience’s agenda.

Your first drafts will be really rough, with lots of spelling and syntax errors. Then, there is quite a bit of rewriting sentences and rearranging ideas. Editing and polishing your stories.

You may be a better writer than I am, but it takes me at least three iterations to get a good story ready. I have to write the story. Then I work on something else. The next day, I come back and rewrite the story. I usually publish the story at that point.

A week or so later I come back to the story and edit and polish it again. Then, it really starts to shine. I edit my stories a lot.

Read your stories every once in a while and edit and polish them. Populate your website with a good selection of really valuable stories. Pay particular attention to the value you are supplying for your audience.

What good does it do your audience to read your story? How do your stories benefit your audience? Keep track of your word count. Make sure your pictures and banner ads are all neatly aligned and your webpages look attractive. Most of all, work on making the content of your stories, valuable to your audience.

Selling with Your Stories

Reading your content is the most wanted response in some cases. In other cases, you want to lead your audience to buy something on your website or lead them to buy something on another website.

A lot of your stories are going to be preselling things. Your affiliate programs will actually do the selling. You’re just referring people who are interested in purchasing the kind of goods sold by your affiliate programs.

Produce a lot of your own valuable content, which is not necessarily about selling your affiliate programs. You are teaching your audience valuable information. Your audience visits your affiliate programs because the programs match the content you are writing about and your audience is naturally interested in purchasing stuff like that.

Publishing Your Stories

Not publishing your story is the hardest part of this process. You want to get more content on your website as fast as possible. Its best to wait. Let that story stew slowly.

Once you get your word count filled out, then save your story and go do something else. Start writing another story. Start writing a new story first thing in the morning. After you get a good start on that, pull up an older first draft. Edit and polish that. Then, open a second draft and edit and polish that.

Once you get that third draft ready, go ahead and publish it. Copy and paste it into your website editor. Go through and set all your headings as headings. Then insert your pictures and other media.

Setting up your headings and your text links, and then your pictures, videos and banner ads takes some time. It is tedious work.

Just like any job, you get good at it. You learn by repetition, how to save time and get the job done efficiently. Save steps and seconds, every chance you get. Continuously improve yourself and your stories. Develop your system, increase your word count and repeat the process over and over again.