My First Month on Vocal: A Unique Experience

It has officially been just over a month since I joined Vocal and I have to say that this experience has been wonderful. I’d love to share my thoughts on these first 30 days as a Vocal creator and my plans going forward.

Initial Thoughts

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that I was overwhelmed by the platform at first. There’s a lot going on! Plus, there’s so much to read that it’s hard to know where to start. However, once I got started, I realized that there are many amazing creators on the site and subscribing to them gave me something to focus my energies on. This, in addition to learning my way around the site a bit better, helped me feel much less overwhelmed.

The Feedback

Receiving feedback on my work was amazing and something I hadn’t realized I was craving until I started getting it. It’s wonderful to know that others are reading what I’ve written and enjoy it. The reader insights are great, and I always look forward to seeing those pop up in my notifications.

Interaction

Being able to communicate with other creators and get to know them a bit through the platform has been great. While it’s early days and I’m sure I will get to know more of you in due time, it’s nice to build an online group of “friends” that I look forward to seeing in my notifications both on Vocal and in the various Facebook groups related to Vocal that I’ve joined.

Top Stories

I’ve been surprised by two Top Stories in this first month on the site. I will admit to getting out of my chair and doing a bit of a dance when I received the notification about it (which was awkward once when I was at the library, ha!) These Top Stories further cemented the belief that I had found my place to share my writing with the world where it could be appreciated by others.

Challenges

The Challenges on Vocal have been inspiring and gotten me to write outside of my comfort zone which is a wonderful thing for any writer. It’s always good to stretch those creative writing muscles! I will say that once all the poetry Challenges were recently released, and then later the short story ones, I became very overwhelmed by the sheer number of them.

Future Challenges

A friend of mine who also decided to join Vocal with me created a spreadsheet to track all of the Challenges and her entries. I thought this was a fantastic idea and decided to follow along the same path. This has helped me feel more confident as I write these Challenge entries. My plan is to write two entries for each Challenge, if possible.

Vocal Goals

I have always been one to make goals and do my best to reach them through careful planning and consistent work. I find this helps keep me motivated to do things, even things I love, when I just don’t feel like it some days. I have written these goals down in my planner and add things to my daily to-do list that will help me make them a reality.

Discord Server?

I have contemplated creating a Discord server for Vocal creators to chat (on- and off-topic), share their work, and more. However, I’m not sure how I would go about doing this or if it’s even something that anyone would be interested in. I know there’s an official Vocal Media server but it’s mostly for the site to share and there’s nowhere for creators to communicate.

So… there you have it. My experience on Vocal this first month and what I plan to do going forward (at least short-term). I hope to be around a while as this platform has given me a renewed passion for writing that I have not felt in quite some time. Thank you Vocal for giving us a place to share our work and find other like-minded writers!