Life was easier in the days when I just had to write words, but was it more rewarding?
I realised the other day that I frequently spend as much time fiddling about with my stories in various publishing back-ends as I do actually writing them. Even a simple ten-minute press release write-up can involve a further ten minutes of digging through sites for links, inserting said links, resizing and uploading pics, setting categories... And that's without mentioning the follow-up promo tasks on big stories.
Sometimes it's hard not to wish I (or rather the sites I write for) had someone to Do This Stuff For Me. Imagine how many stories I could do a day...
But most of the time I realise this is just what you have to do nowadays - part of the skillset of an online journalist. There are thousands of bloggers to whom it's second nature who'd do it if I got arsey... Although some of the tasks listed above can be a bit of a grind when there's another story to move onto, nailing a story with all of these elements and seeing it go live does feel rewarding.
As long as the back-end is working properly, of course, and doesn't fall over losing all those (hopefully) well-crafted words that kickstarted the process. Buy that's another post...
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