Some More Observations On My Vocal Writing

Introduction

I know that I often write these diaristic pieces and I am writing this as a last Vocal story before I take a weekend off to spend a couple of days in Whitby. If you know me on Facebook, Instagram or Threads you will still see the pictures I post before I rejoin Vocal properly on Monday but this is what I have been dealing with this week.

Mikeydred's Downer Week And How He Has Dealt With It

There have been a few things on Vocal that have made me feel down, and I started to write about them but then trashed it because I thought they were whiney, and boring and would show me to be just somebody who does nothing but complain.

I do try and promote other users but that only gets reciprocated by one or two which is why I have dropped out of "Raise Your Voice" which I still think is a great way of promoting other Creators and usually when I make suggestions they get Top Stories. Actually just writing that has made me decide to partake in the next one, so already this has had a positive effect on my engagement with Vocal, which is a good thing.

One thing I will still complain about is Vocal's useless autosave about a minute into writing a piece that wipes your last thirty seconds of writing. I lost a sentence at the beginning of this piece, but luckily it stayed with me so I could rewrite it. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean it should.

Although I can write about anything, I also like prompts and challenges, maybe it is just because I am so lazy and can't be bothered to come up with an original idea myself. There is just one lie Vocal Challenge, the fifty-word love poem, which I have entered twice so I don't think I can do another, but there are lots of live unofficial challenges and I decided to gather them together on a thread in the Vocal Social Society like this one here.

Unfortunately, it didn't work and I was the only one adding the unofficial challenges, but it was in VSS so non-members might not see it, so for February this year I thought I would try it as a Vocal article so that, in theory all Vocal Creators could see it.

When I published it, it got a few hearts and some good responses.

I have used every challenge in that piece to write, a poem or story, and that has helped me this week. The problem is, as I have used every one of these challenges I now need to put my thinking hat on.

If I see any new challenges this month I will add them to the article and then write an appropriate story for it.

The thing is, that the whole Vocal community needs engagement and reciprocity, and if you don't get that it is a good idea to approach things from a different angle as I did with the unofficial challenges.

I always go back to Judey Kalchik's piece on reciprocity which, if you haven't read it, you should do. It is here:

Conclusion

As I have been writing this I have had another idea from a piece, although I may not have time to write before I leave, so it may appear on Monday. I am certainly feeling good and looking forward to continuing writing, having a weekend in Whitby getting ideas for whatever I am going to write about next.

I included "Join Together" by The Who because that is what we should all do on Vocal.

Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate all the support that you give to me.