Being a Writer and the Problem of Steem

Being a writer on Steem is difficult.

Before I knew about Steem, I had my personal goals, manuscripts I wanted to finish, stories I was sending off to mainstream journals and magazines. I had planned to finish writing the first draft of a new book over the Christmas holidays. I had translated another manuscript and got it ready for sending it to publishers. I was writing book proposals and doing research on publishers, where to send what. I was writing academic papers and sending them off. I was communicating with a literary agent for a possible book.

But then... Steem...

And then, December 25th, 2017... I heard about Steem.
And I predictably got lost in all the exciting contests and challenges that are to be found there. It is a tricky thing, writing many things that are outside of your comfortzone is really a good thing to do when you want to develop your writing skills. And writing fiction is somewhat new to me. So why not try?

I can really recommend everyone joining the contests. Not only because there are nice prizes, but also because you get to know a community of writers, and occasionally you even read really nice stories and poems written by other people. And then you can follow those people, and they eventually start running their own contests...

Examples of some great contests running NOW

• Take a look at this 50-word Kudos Poetry Competition for instance, run by @nikisteem and @damianjayclay. Now in round 2.
• Or this Comedy Open Mic contest by @comedyopenmic and affiliated crazy people, now in round 9.
• Or this Art Prompt Writing contest by @thewritersblock, which is now open for artists to enter a picture, which will then be the prompt for a story (for which you get two weeks, which is nice because that allows for time to edit & have it workshopped).

But there is also a downside to all this fun and excitement.
Because my original goals didn't change, didn't just go away.
So Steem just added a whole lot of interesting things, and as always, I ended up wanting to do too much.

April: Camp Nano

This month has been better, because I've joined 'Camp Nano' -- it makes you set a specific goal, and you track each day if you get any closer to that goal on this website and for those interested, you can see my stats here. My goal was easy: finish the draft of the new philosophy-for-general-audience book & write its book proposal to be ready to send out to publishers. Something I had planned to do in January already. But I think I will make it in April. I've written over 10.000 words for it already in the past two weeks, and still going strong. And being in a 'cabin' with other steemians from @thewritersblock definitely makes it much nicer, and being able to sprint together is such a rare and wonderful thing!

There were some setbacks as well, obviously. I realised I had to cut four chapters that didn't fit even though I had planned them already. But I also realised that this book does more than I had thought it would, so I'll add two chapters explaining that, and the effect it might have in different domains. Overall, I'm doing well. Now let's hope publishers will think the same...

And now, back to writing!

^{Here an overview of more fiction/short stories and poetry by @nobyeni.
Please read the disclaimer.}