The Royal Ballet All-Star Gala, Carousel with Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan with Mayara Magri and Matthew Bell

In this Post

The Reasons Why

The Outline Process of Writing a Post

The Reasons Why

Every writer has their process of getting particular words and phrases onto the page in a semblance of order. I can easily feel like dear Eric who played all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.

As one of the united dyslexic proletariat (workers) of the world, thank you, Karl and Freddie, the worms get muddled. The original draft text in German was “Proletarians of all countries, unite” nowhere near as good as the phrase as the edited version in English. There is a slightly different version again in Highgate Cemetery. It is so easy to go off at a tangent and end up like Alice down a rabbit-hole, miles from my intended destination. I nearly went into a siding just then, with the 1848 Communist Manifesto.

Famous Dyslexics

Nevertheless, back to the plot, I now have a process to try and fix the word blindness I possess.  Dyslexia is not a single disorder, up to 20% of people may have a mild form. Each dyslexic has their particular version of the condition to deal with. As a for instance, some of the great and good who suffer from Dyslexia are Jamie Oliver, Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston. For me, it is not necessarily realising after multiple readings of the draft text that words are missing or are in the wrong order.

I don’t remember being taught English grammar at school. The only thing I remember about learning written English was one event. When I was six, I was told off for mis-spelling the word because without the letter u.

When I first started writing blog posts all those years ago, I just put the words down and then published them to the world. As you read on hopefully you will see now there is a much more considered process in the craft of writing. I’m not claiming to be any better at the art of writing than I was. But at least now I know where some of the snags hide. Don’t get me started on Apostrophes. Though for me, it is far easier to be a creative photographer than a well-honed and convincing writer. Competent expressive photography and fluent writing skills rarely dwell in the same body.

The Royal Ballet All-Star Gala, Carousel with Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan with Mayara Magri and Matthew Bell

The Outline Process of Writing a Post

Here is the process I go through to get to the point that you probably thought only takes an hour or two.

0 Having an idea of what to write about in the first place, this step is the hardest. My ideas come from a multitude of diverse ramblings. Very often, I will make a few rough notes in pencil in my Journal. Why, have I always preferred to write with a soft pencil in my Journals? Who said, because he’s not allowed a pen?

1 I prepare an outline draft in Word, this may be typed or dictated as I’m doing now. I use an old version of Dragon Speech Recognition Software that saves much of the typing donkey work. However, the way we speak and how we write is somewhat different. Dictated text is probably longer and therefore more difficult to read unless very carefully edited. Another pertinent issue for a Dyslexic is Dragon does not always type exactly what is said. Therefore, the need as a dyslexic for vigilance is ever-present.

2 After the text is finished, I use the free Grammarly Software to find missing articles, hyphens and commas.

3 The Grammarly Software will also give you feedback on your correctness and style of writing.

The Royal Ballet All-Star Gala, Carousel with Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan with Mayara Magri and Matthew Bell

Building the Webpage

4 The web page for the post is then built with the text from Word and pictures Exported from Lightroom. The consistent formatting of the page is important here. Also, the layout needs to look balanced when viewed on a monitor. My pages are not designed for a vertical smartphones aspect ratio.

Final Editing

5 Eventually, you get to the point where you think you’re ready to publish the post to a waiting and eager world. Before you hit the send button, the webpage builder has also analysed the readability of the text and given it a score out of 100. The higher the Flesch Ease of Reading scores the better. Most of my scores are between 60 and 70 meaning its reasonably easy to read.

6 The Flesch Ease of Reading score is broken down into different categories. These categories are:

• • • The percentage of sentences using a Passive Voice – advised being no more than 10%.
    • The number of Consecutive Sentences starting with the same word, the fewer the better.
    • Subheading Distribution – no more than 200 words under a subheading.
    • Paragraph Length – a maximum of 200 words.
    • Sentence Length – no longer than 20 words.
    • The percentage of Transition Words (for example, but or however) is to be at least 30%.

A Creative Process

Therefore, you can see that being a writer in creative terms is very similar to that of the photographer. There are rules to achieve accuracy, brevity and clarity when committing words to a page. Some writers are a joy to read because of their ability to create delightful flowing sentences. Precisely the right word in the correct place. On the other hand, others may be extremely knowledgeable but have great difficulty in writing well. How often have you tried to read an introduction to a photographer’s work by an academic? The non-photographer seems to have thrown random words from a thesaurus on to a page? I know I have on many occasions.

7 A review of the Flesch Ease of Reading Score will be carried out including all the subcategories. From that review, minor tweaks will be made to the text to hopefully remove any unwanted aspects of the writing. This is where the time is added to the process.

Publish and be Damned

8 Publish the post on my website to make it live so the world can see it if they know it’s there. I did forget this stage once until a kind soul emailed me to say, where is it?

9 Set up the Mailchimp email to send out the link to the post.

10 Schedule Mailchimp to send the email at 08.00 am on the second Wednesday after doing the whole process for the previous post.

What I Wrote

I suppose some people like the great playwright Ernie Wise would knock off their plays “what I wrote” in a few hours. For the rest of us mere mortals, the accomplishment of scribbling with a soft electric pencil is harder than it looks.  An obsolete side note from history to finish. The first successful commercial Word Processor The Electric Pencil was marketed in 1976 by Michael Shrayer a New York filmmaker. The emerging technology was first used by Jerry Pournelle an American Polymath to write and edit a chapter of a published science fiction book in 1977.