My Blog Post Writing Process

Ciao lovelies! Today's post will be a behind the scenes look at my blog post writing process!
I want to do a few posts like these (or maybe videos- I want to do morning and night routines videos in the summer). I think they can be fun, or at least moderately interesting! So I wanted to share my blog post writing process with you all!

Step 1- Consult the list!
For the first step, I consult my lovely list of 263 blog post ideas! My list is color coded with the highlight tool, and exists digitally.
My Post Ideas list
Example of the color coding. No highlight means not done yet, Blue is for 5 posts I haven't done yet, Red is in progress, Green is can be reused (usually vague topics that have more detailed things inside them, in this example, food recipes, I can post more than one recipe), Yellow is completed and published. 
I made this list originally on New Years Day 2017, and I add to it whenever I get ideas. If you have anything you want to see on this blog, comment it, so I can add it to the list! 
So the first step in the post writing process is to choose an idea from the list!

Step 2- Rough Draft
The next step in my process is to write out the post roughly in a notebook. I usually use one notebook until I finish it entirely, and then I move on to a new one. On average, I use about 4 pages to write a blog post.
My current notebook

Within the rough draft, I include notes of where to add things like links, images, videos, and other media. I also use sticky notes to mark things that I think need further research, citation, or possible changes. 

Step 3- Conversion to Word File
To start this process, I type everything from the notebook as is into a Word Document. Then I go though and make necessary spelling and grammar changes, as well as adjust any awkward sentences. 
 Once the post itself is looking decent, I gather all the links I will need to hyperlink in the blog post, and add them to the end of the Word File.
Take for example the word file for a recent post. Notice that the title is also included in the post, and that there is no formatting. That's because we will need to be moving all of the text into the blogger window soon, and formatting is usually lost in this process. 

Step 4- Movement to Blogger
Now that the textual framework is done, we will move it into the blogger platform. This part is very simple, I simply copy paste the text directly and format from there, adding bold, underlines, highlights, etc. I also hyperlink everything in this step.

 Step 5- Making the Graphics
I have two preferred online photo editors for graphics, Pixlr and Pic Monkey.
Pixlr is nice because it is user friendly, powerful, and free;
on the other hand, Pic Monkey is nice because you can actually create png files with transparent backgrounds, something you can't do on Pixlr. However, it is naggy about signing up for a premium membership, which nobody wants to do.
I will do a more detailed tutorial on custom graphics at a later date, though I do have one up from a few years back on Custom Buttons with Dropshadow.
Once the graphics are made, I add them to the post where they belong, as well as adding my signoff graphic. 
As a fun tidbit, for gifs I make from my Youtube videos, I usually use ImageFlip! I also made a cute reaction gif of Yumi King-
If you don't know who she is, she's a kawaii lifestyle/DIY Youtuber and you should totally go check her out!

Step 6-Last Checks and Publish
The last thing I do is read over the post to ensure that it still sounds and looks the way I want.
I usually schedule posts for 6 AM, and usually have a huge queue, but like I said the last post, depression's been kicking my a- er, behind here, so I'm forcing myself through it.

There's a lot more to being a blogger than just the post writing process, but I thought it would be fun to share this with you all today! Let me know what you thought!
I promise I will be back on track soon, as soon as I can drag myself out of this horrible rut....ugh. Stay positive, is what I always try to do in these situations, just stay positive. A positive outlook equals a happy life!

Stay happy my dears! See you tomorrow!

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