Who I Am And Why I’m Here?

Okay, I’ve put this off long enough. It’s time to start and get this over with.

Brrr…The words are not coming forth!!!!

Really, now let’s begin

Who am I?

My name is Samuel, I live in Nigeria and I have a passion for writing. The thought of stringing words together that inspire emotions: laughter, remorse, surprise, sadness, and so on, is so elating.  I love reading beautifully written poems and prose (books, articles, blog posts, news stories, e.t.c). In fact, I envy writers, mostly because I’ve never felt sufficient enough to call myself one. Whenever my ‘writer-friends’ talk about how they started writing when they were only seven years old, I can’t help but blame my parents and teachers for not imposing the skill of writing on me – however irrational that is.

I’ve been involved in a little bit of writing over the years. I was a member of the press in my secondary school. I’m also a campus journalist in my university. So, I can say I have a fair knowledge of grammar and reporting, but I have always been petrified by the thought of writing something creative, something off the top of my head.

To be honest, I have been procrastinating writing this post for over nine hours.

The cause of this, I’m uncertain. I have these ideas, these stories, these opinions in my head that I want to share the world, but I find it daunting to piece them down, coherently, on paper. Is it perfectionism? I’ve been told that I’m melancholic.

Whatever the reason, it comes to an end today! This brings me to why I launched this blog.

Why am I here?

This morning, Friday, August 12, 2015, at about 1:00 am, I was surfing the web, looking for inspiration on how to start a news commentary blog, when I stumbled upon Dailypost.wordpress.com. Scanning through the articles there, I was in awe. “This is the answer to all I’ve been searching for,” I said to myself.

I have made several attempts at blogging but none ever seemed fruitful for one reason I was certain of; quality content. For as long as I can remember, I have been scouring the internet and bookshops for anything that could teach me ‘how to write’. I needed to know how to write well in order to create quality content that will attract readers to my blog, at least that was what all the ‘Blogging tips blogs’ were telling me. I’ve read several books and blogs, taken online courses, watched videos, but ironically, none of them was doing any justice to my problem.

Unlike others, the wealth of helpful resources I saw on Dailypost’s Blogging University renewed my resolve that I can actually be the writer I always wanted to be. I still have the opportunity to express myself, tell my stories and air my views and without any fear.

So, I came up with an idea to help me be better at creative writing, storytelling, journalism, and blogging. Just writing in general. I decided to create this blog where I will be writing and publishing several blog posts every day, over a period of twenty days or more – hence the name Writing In Twenty. The blog posts will be based on different topics and will have different styles. The ideas for the posts will be generated from the prompts provided by the courses I will be taking on Blogging U.

This post is a completion of the first challenge in the Writing 101 course in Blogging U. The assignment was to ‘Unlock your mind’ by free writing. I had to set the timer for 20 minutes and write whatever came to my mind without hitting backspace or even thinking twice until the 2o minutes countdown was over. Although I decided to synchronize the challenge with another one from Blogging 101 where I was to write and publish a “who I am and why I’m here” post. So, for twenty minutes, I was writing the first draft of this post, without backspacing or thinking twice. Just off the top of my head.

In case you’re interested in joining me on this, here’s a breakdown of how I’m taking the project:

• I signed up for Blogging U: Everyday, they’ll send me an email with little action steps I can take to improve my writing. They cover other areas like blogging, SEO, blog design, and monetization.
• I downloaded ‘Writing 101: Building a blogging habit’ in PDF format: The ebook offers different writing challenges for twenty days that teaches and forces you to write creatively.
• Every day I will write a blog post based on what is prompted by the ‘Writing 101: Building a blogging habit’ course.
• I will also participate in ‘Blogging 101: Zero to hero’ assignment also provided by Dailypost, making incremental changes to the blog’s content and design.

With all these said, you might(did I say might? You will) notice that this post and others that I will be writing in the coming days might be pretty crappy. Well, I know. Bear with me, and also bear in mind that this is my conscious effort to become a better writer, so you might want to be a little gentle on the criticism ;).

I could have done this project privately, offline, but I chose to do it publicly for two reasons. Knowing I am being held accountable, I will do it with more seriousness and discipline, and also to get feedback from other expert and upcoming writers and bloggers.

So, kindly subscribe to this blog so that you’ll get my blog posts straight in your inbox, and also drop your opinions, criticism, suggestions and advice in the comment box below.

 

 

WOW! I don’t think I’ve ever written something this long in my entire life…