I find my rate-limiting step in producing high quality, high-volume blog content is the grammatical editing process.
However, I may finally have a handle on this.
For the past several weeks, I’ve been using the free version of an app called Grammarly.
And guess what? Not only does it remove my resistance to editing, it actually makes editing fun!
So, here’s how I integrate Grammarly into my blog creation flow.
- At night, I select the next day’s blog topic from a standing list I have on OmniFocus. I put this topic on a 3 x 5 note card and I spend 5-30 minutes jotting down points I would like to discuss. (Sometimes this requires online research, sometimes it doesn’t.)
- The next morning, with my Sony digital recorder in hand and my 3 x 5 card in my pocket, I go for my morning walk and dictate a rough draft of my post. This usually takes anywhere from 2000 to 5000 steps in Fitbit time.
- When I get home I pop my digital recorder in my iMac, and I download the audio file and I transcribe it on Dragon Dictation (as I’m making my cup of coffee).
- I copy and paste this transcribed rough draft into Pages, where I do one read through with one top-level edit.
- Now, here’s the fun part. I copy this second rough draft and paste it into Grammarly. Then, magically, most of my grammatical spelling and spacing errors appear before my eyes. I just have to point and click to make most of the changes.
- After this, I copy and paste this now third rough draft into WordPress, adding a title, category, links, and photos. Next, I do something that I learned from the Master Blogger Tim Ferris: I always print out a hard copy and look for final errors. OF note – in the last 150 posts I have always found at least one error!
- Finally, I hit the publish button.
On paper, this appears complicated.
But in practice, it’s not.
The key creative efforts are done the night before, when I think about the topic, and then, on my walk, when I am structuring the topic as I would in a conversation with a friend. For me, these parts incredibly enjoyable, Who doesn’t mind a little evening brainstorming, and then a relaxing talk on a beautiful crisp autumn morning?
The other steps are mostly mechanical, and these steps – from transcription to hitting the publishing button – are usually all completed before I make it through three-quarters of my coffee.
Anyway, Grammarly is one of those rare apps which is both simple to use and gives you an immediate productivity boost.
I’m going to give it a few more days, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to get the premium version to help nudge my writing to be a little better.
Blog on my friends.