Internet and YouTube videos are filled with suggestions on how to organize, categories and store drafts of your blog posts and ideas. There are even specialized planners just for bloggers. And yes, I admit I love planner videos so I have spent time watching some of those.
But found none to be applicable for me.
Here’s my simple and primitive method:
Just write and store in the Draft of my Posts folder in my WordPress dashboard.
No need excel sheets, fancy apps or planners. When I have an idea, I just login into my blog, move straight to the Posts> Drafts section, open up a new blog post and type away.
Sometimes, when I feel like writing a blog post but do not have any post idea, I would visit the Draft section, and see a list of unfinished articles. There would be one or two that catches my fancy and I would go in add more. Often I find I would complete it, and feeling in a roll, would do more and more.
Why this method suits me?
Because I am a right brain person. When the inspiration hits me, I can really write.
And sometimes, when I feel like it, I would prepare all my images, write the title, and leave these articles in Draft format.
I often do this especially for my travel blogs. I usually take my own pictures for my travel blogs. When I aim my phone to take the pictures, my mind I already had a rough idea on what to write. But oftrn, to prepare the picture and write the article would make my output slower.
I have find I work faster when I theme my tasks. For example in one sitting I would be processing photos and uploading them in a draft post. Then later I would open my Drafts and start writing a few articles at one sitting.
Finally, I would then make final tweaks to the article, ie checking spelling, proofreading, assigning categories, tags and default image. Then scheduling them for publishing.
In fact, this is exactly what I did for this article as well as many articles now for my other blogs. This article was first drafted and stored in my Draft folder using my phone. I am a caregiver and my main priority is to manage my mom. My mom took an average an hour to finish her meals. While waiting for her, the inspiration hit me and I took out my phone to type this article. The next day, when I got back to my laptop, I opened this article, made some edits and check spell checks, assign the categories, tags and featured image, and then scheduled for publishing.
Would this make the Draft folder too cluttered?
Yes, kind of a bit. But mostly the clutter were due to drafts I have years ago which I no longer use as well as some past blog posts that I have unpublished.
Nowadays, I tend to look at the past 5 or so draft articles and work on them instead of just creating more and more. I would usually strive to finish those recent drafts before adding new ones.
I have find this method to be straightforward and simple, but effective. In the past, I have tried to write down my drafts in books. Unfortunately my handwriting is such chicken scratch that I sometimes have problem knowing what I had written. And looking at the pages of chicken scratches that I have written really made me lose all my mood to retype these into a post.
My point is, we do not need to invest money in bells and whistles. Sometimes just the basic stuff, coming default with your WordPress site that would just do the job just fine. Perhaps for you may have a folder in your phone where you would type out all the drafts before transferring them to your blog post. Whichever method that suits you best that keeps you motivated in writing.
Most important is to start instead of procrastinating. Most of the time we have what we need to get our work done and there ain’t no need to go looking elsewhere and paying for software.
