I’ve stumbled upon a method of drafting blog posts which will likely come in handy, in the future.

Last night, I wrote a rough draft of the post which became, Yeah…Maybe I Kind of Love Design, today.

I did it pretty much without beginning with, “Today, I did something,” (or rather, I caught myself: I’ve had to re-edit too many of those posts, once I passed the midnight mark). I knew I didn’t have any photos and I knew I wasn’t going to take photos until I had daylight, again. I honestly didn’t know if we were going to have adequate light today, or more rain (the rain is welcome, by the way); nor did I know whether I’d be able to collect all the photographs. I’d intended to post on Friday or Saturday night, which I’ve found to have the best viewing hours.

Essentially, that first draft took up four pages. I saved the text, printed it, set preliminary Categories and Tags, and went to bed. Today (I think? — I was up before dawn and then went back to bed and awoke again in the afternoon sunlight), I went over the rough draft and edited freely — by hand. These edits probably happened in the morning, before I got chilled and went back to sleep.

Because my original draft had been saved and printed, I didn’t feel the need to preserve my divergences into multiple tangents. In the past, I have tended to preserve these tangents for the sake of flow — and largely as an artifact of the WordPress editor — but it is unnecessary when I know the material is archived, barely related, and later can be put to better use.

I read it over, identified the different logical sections, deleted large sections which were otherwise irrelevant to the core reader (like a digression into wirework, when the subject of the post is arguably bead-weaving). After I had done various line edits to the text itself, I also identified where photographs or other images would enhance what I was trying to communicate.

Before the sunlight went away, I took several photos for each suggestion I had brainstormed — plus more. The large majority of them didn’t make it to the site.

I ended up using all of the suggestions except one, which was a simple size comparison of two types of round crystal beads. These essentially glowed in the sun, against a black velvet background: probably overexposed. I may tinker with this later, but what I got, didn’t look very salvageable.

I also realize that most of the people who may see that post, probably won’t have the background to know what I’m talking about. A difference of about 0.5mm in bead diameter in a 4mm bead, probably won’t matter to most people…but it does make a difference, in beadweaving. It means that one bead is 7/8ths as long as the other, with adjustments to the volume that I don’t care to calculate.

I realize that, in the last post I made especially, I get into a lot of specifics and minutiae which are likely only apparent to someone who is pretty deeply into the craft.

There really isn’t the same type of community of makers on WordPress as there is elsewhere. Because of this, I might as well post what I want to post, and let people find it…or not. I can make the site and the blog what I want it to be, that is.

After I had edited and uploaded my photos, I added in captions, alt text, and went back a few times for a thorough editing-after-editing. I also deleted the Tag which no longer fit my content, after the edits.

I’m pretty sure that’s all there was, to it. I posted before dinner, and now am posting about my process. Not too bad for a 24-hour period!