My wife came home one day with news that made my heart sank. She was going away on assignment for three days. For some, that means freedom. For me, it means chaos. You see, I have two little princesses whom I love with all my heart. The love is at its fullest when my wife is around, but when she is away, I fear for my sanity.
I think God gave us one brain to focus on one thing, but when you have two babies crying and running around, it can be a tall order. To top it all off, taking care of two babies is a full time job, no rest, no sleep and no Steemit. As such, I prepared in two days all the posts that I will be posting for the next five days. As each post will be a minimum of 600 words, it can be rather daunting to produce 3000 words. Thank God, I managed to complete all five posts. Hopefully these tips will help you if you were ever caught in a similar situation.
So, if you are looking to maximize the types of posts you have on Steemit or you need to help your students come up with more ideas when it comes to writing, this post is for you. Now, let's begin...
Cutting A Main Topic Into Many Pieces
If you have been posting for quite a while now on Steemit, you would have a particular area that you would always write about. For me, that's education. Now within this area that you have been writing about, there are several subtopics. For my case, that may consist of teaching, learning, students and different levels of education. Within these areas, you can talk about a particular issue, trend or method.
Now, this isn't new and many have probably done the same when it comes to writing posts on Steemit. However, there is a need to maximize your ideas or else it can be difficult to come up with enough ideas to continue writing. In true blue academic writing, you will be required to provide a point and a counterpoint on a particular issue. The same goes for Steemit, except that instead of writing about the point and counterpoint in the same essay like academic writing, you can break it into two to three posts. So let's take the example of writing a post on going to college.
In your first post, you can write about why you would agree that we should all go to college. You can talk about two to three benefits of doing so and include a few examples or stories to support your stand. In posts like this, talking about the why, to whom it may concern, the when and where should get you to approximately 500 words.
Plan It All On One Document
As seen above, one topic can be easily broken into three posts. Now, if such a method is to your liking, it is important to complete all three posts on one document. You can begin by using the following steps:
i) Think of a topic, it has to be general. For example: Studying Well?
ii) Break this down into one of the following subtopics.
- Pros and Cons of Studying Well
- Who, What, Where, When, Why and How can someone study well?
- Problems & Hacks to Studying Well.
iii) Create a short draft of no more than 6 sentences with regards to one of the subtopics. For example, the pros and cons of studying well.
iv) The six sentences should be equally divided, 3 on the pros and 3 on the cons of studying well.
From such a method, you would have already created 2 posts, one on the pros and one on the cons. The same method can be applied on the other subtopics as well such as problems and hacks.
Flipping Through Your Gallery & Free Write!
As much as some of us would not like to admit it, life is exciting. While my life is currently filled with adventures with my two girls, scrolling a little further back does remind me of my university days. It is through this that I would find inspiration to write. You will never know what you will come across as you look through the photos on Facebook, on Google photos or through a physical album.
Whatever you come across, no matter how small or insignificant it may be to you, it can be transformed into a great post. Just use the methods above, talk about the lesson learnt or how and why it happened. As you start writing, you will never know what you may find. Even if you don't feel inspired, I do recommend taking that photo and scribbling some ideas for that photo down. You can later save it on a document for a later day. You will never know, sometimes, great posts just takes time to brew.
Ridiculous + Practical Skills = Great Lessons
There are times that you will find it rather impossible to fit some topics and ideas into the steps above. What can be done in this case would be to take that idea and mash it together with something ridiculous. For me, I like mashing practical skills and lessons together with food. For example, you may want to talk about saving up. However, knowing that saving can be a rather painful process, as it involves giving up on buying the things that you like. Thus, you can link saving up to eating vegetables.
You could also do the same with certain activities and narrate how the process of doing so is related to your niche. For example, I have written a post on sand tobogganing and Bungee Jumping . Both of which I have linked to learning or writing.
You could also take the ridiculous aspect away from your post and just focus on the practical skills and lessons bit. However, having that ridiculous aspect does offer some form of focus. It forces you to write on the similarity between the practical and the ridiculous. I don't know about you, but I find that by doing so, it does spice up the writing a bit.
Conclusion
Do take note that these techniques and tips are not limited only to Steemit but teaching writing as well. I have found these methods useful and have used them in creating the posts for the last few days. Of course, none of these methods are fool proof, nor are they perfect. That being said, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Perhaps you have tried some of these techniques in the classroom or when you write on Steemit? Do let me know in the comments below.
