If you haven’t noticed, we try to put up new articles five times a week. To us, it seems like a small amount, but pretty much anyone else we mention it to says that it is a lot! How do we manage to generate so much content? How do we even write at all? How am I writing right now?? I actually don’t know but maybe I will figure it out by the end of this post.
As you know from looking at our Look At Us page every day, there are some other people who help us out. Maybe some day they will write more frequently, but know that for the purposes of this article, I am discussing the personas of Amandoll and Dollissa. Although we write so similarly that we can trade off mid-article and write for each other, we have very striking differences.
We write as experts for every other topic, but still feel like amateur baby writers, even though we have both been writing for decades for various things. Anyway, this isn’t really an article about advice. It’s about ego and looking into the mirror and scrutinizing and, most importantly, putting words in your eyes.
Expressing Ourselves
Dollissa believes that brevity is the soul of wit. She read that somewhere because she often reads articles by skilled, professional writers who are explaining how to be a “better writer.”
I, on the other hand, believe that humor is a hike through varying dazzling terrains that should make you feel exhausted after you finish reading it — exhausted yet TRIUMPHANT in the face of adversity. I sometimes read the things that Dollissa links me about improvement (I see you trying to hint at me, u bitch) but you can’t tell me anything! I do what I want!!
Also I err on the side of filler because of the old OMGJeremy site and still feel a twinge of guilt if I don’t reach a word count exceeding a thousand words. Jeremy used to enforce “2000 or more” for those articles and you can bet that I learned how to write wordily, wording up sentences with extra words left and right. I can probably safely assume that if any modern person looks at one of my articles, they probably skim and give up halfway through. Your losses, if so!
What Are We Thinking?!
We both tend to write an entire article because we thought of one single sentence that inspired us. We have notebooks, scraps of papers, txt files, simplenote notes, random words on our calendar as reminder, and plenty of incomplete drafts! If we think of a topic first, it takes forever as we let it stew until we think of an angle we like. That may be the most noticeable way that we “work a craft” here. I laughed when I wrote that. But we like feeling proud of anything we have written! Phoning it in isn’t a great look.
Dollissa is highly distracted a lot, and will take all day to write an article. I strike while the iron is hot and will often write a thousand words all at once, in order, and then go back and tighten things up as needed. It might take two hours, at most. By the way, “tightening up” does not mean making anything more concise. Heavens no! I just make sure I finish thoughts, that’s all.
A thing you might not know is that usually we are in a race of topics. As in, whoever thinks of a topic gets to write it, like it’s an amazing treat. But sometimes we think of a topic that the other would probably be more knowledgeable about. And — and this is a real shock, probably — sometimes, one of us will write the bulk of the others’ article for them. Then it becomes attributed to that author. Woah!
Writers’ Block: a Crummy Block
Even though we seem like a productive factory of content, we do find ourselves victim to the block. This is easily solved by an attitude shift as we shout to the walls and our chat windows about how we maintain the Sneer Campaign for FUN ONLY and aren’t being paid. Then we throw our cares into the river to drown and never think twice — until later when we grimly look at all of the black marks accumulating on our Shame Calendar.
On days when we are pluckier, masters of our own destinies, we simply stop writing that article and work on a different one. Or, we choose from the backlog of OMGJ content that we still have on hand. What do you think all of those “overindulgent self portraits” are about? I’ll let you in on a little secret: drawing those is a lot faster and easier than writing when I don’t feel like it! More rarely, whichever one of us that is blocked just asks the other to finish it. Usually we have to be crying for this one to work.
Will We Ever Take That Leap?
As mentioned seconds ago, we write for Sneer Campaign because it is fun! And it also gives us a sense of purpose, along with some positive droplets of good self esteem. Sometimes we talk about trying to write for a real publication, or a site that has enough money to advertise and be seen by loads of people and therefore can pay their talent — but that sounds stressful!
When you run your own site and no one is paying you to meet specific guidelines or cater to a specific audience, it is actually a pleasant way to spend some time. But, before you try that out for yourself, why not instead jump right into the intense world of writing for us as a guest!
We aren’t that demanding, no matter what our Guideline Demands suggest! Just give us like five paragraphs and we will smile and post it as soon as we can, sighing in relief that we can have kind of a day off Please! Hurry!