A Vocal Media Creator's Confessions

Writing on a platform with exceptional writers is in many ways intimidating and frustrating, the professional writers, bloggers, and book authors are wordsmiths with immeasurable skills compared to my humble neophyte skills. Of course, that's my internal feelings speaking out.

However, there are vocal group individuals that have encouraged me. You know who you are! Truly, the encouragers and supporters are an integral part of my growth as a writer. In fact, words cannot adequately express my heartfelt gratification and happiness that they have provided support along my writing journey.

Learning! "If you aren't winning, you are learning!" It's a paraphrase of one of my favorite quotes that I use often and that I wholeheartedly believe in. Learning to become a better creator, my stories hopefully become superior. In the end, my written stories will be better, finer, and greater for my grandchildren.

While typing directly to vocal draft at this very moment, many, okay I confess, most of my stories have been written on my email account with Gmail. Typing my draft on Gmail's email and copying and pasting the story back and forth from my email's draft to vocal's draft. Methodical, I move copy from one to the other. Granted, this isn't the perfect or ideal way to create a story.

Unfortunately, this method can be problematic. Unsurprisingly, things can happen. In fact, they do! For example, you copy the paragraph and the paragraph doesn't copy and paste correctly. Instead, the copied paragraph is mysteriously deleted and doesn't paste into the vocal draft. Shockingly, you lose the paragraph in the process which has happened to me numerous times. Unexplainably, my laptop doesn't have a copy board or wastebasket where the accidentally deleted copy could be retrieved from.

When this has occurred, a rewrite of the lost paragraph became necessary and was immediately accomplished saving me from aghast. Sometimes, the rewrite of the paragraph inevitably has turned out better than the original write. Naturally, my thoughts turn to philosophy and quote, "Everything happens for a reason." Who knew that it would turn out better? At the time, I was extremely frustrated and clueless.

Another transfer copy and paste dilemma, the ubiquitous spacing errors that result. Which you are most likely familiar with, you can easily correct the spacing errors because of the redlines appearing all throughout your story. Correcting the spacing, it's a snap.

Aghast, a transfer error leaving out a sentence or paragraph. This recently happened to me on my Death By Chocolate challenge story. Yes! The following paragraph was accidentally omitted from my Let Them Eat Cake story which was published and read.

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"You see, over a decade earlier, Mrs. Walker's family had been diagnosed with celiac disease. In addition, the family had a history of diabetes and several members had type 2 diabetes. After the diagnosis of celiac disease, Mrs. Walker, who, at that time, was studying to become a chef, changed her purpose, studies, and focus to become a pastry chef creating gluten- free and sugar-free desserts and pastries."

***

Of course, the new quick edit feature worked perfectly making the edit quick and easy. Unfortunately, my mistake wasn't noticed until a day after publishing, this morning, and after over eighteen reads, aghast.

Since I discovered that my Android cellphone didn't work with the vocal quick edit feature, the paragraph addition was completed using my laptop. As a matter of fact, the quick edit tool is a game-changer because it saves valuable time for the writer and Vocal's support personnel. Those are greatly appreciated too!

Confessing! After a story was published, my glaring typos were alarming and disturbing. Thankful, thankful, thankful, the quick edit is the perfect golden tool to clean up those reversed letters, correcting that singular word that you inadvertently made plural with that added "s" on the end and allows for the addition of copy that was unintentionally omitted.

If a vocal media creator were given one wish, my wish would be that vocal had grammar and spelling features in the draft stage when creating a story, an article, or a review.

As mentioned in the Member's Only story, link below, my stories are written for my grandchildren. Because we can't visit each other as often as I would like, my published stories are shared and discussed by text messaging. For me, the shared stories exceed the monetary rewards that other vocal creators work and strive towards.

Obviously, I am human! Ultimately, humans make mistakes while the world is constantly changing and evolving. Being a part of vocal media, the changes and improvements have been a blessing.

Besides my earlier wish for grammar and spelling features, my grandson reminded me that a word count feature would be nice. Truly, a word count feature would be gratifying and satisfying to this creator as well as other creators on this platform.

All in all, my experience with Vocal media has been an enjoyable and pleasant one. In my heart, the urge to confess my bloopers and wishes for changes and improvements on Vocal was overwhelming. Nevertheless, it only makes me human. While the words are small, they say a lot. Powerful! I am human.

Thank you for reading A Vocal Media Creator's Confessions story.