A Year of Writing for Wunderwelt Libre

On October 20^th was exactly one year since I started writing for Wunderwelt Libre. In that time I have published 28 articles, so pretty much two per month. In a way it doesn’t feel like this much – at the same time, it feels like much longer than just one year. I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learnt from this experience and how it has affected me. If anyone is thinking about joining the Wunderwelt Libre writer squad, it may even be useful to you. If not, I just hope you find it interesting.

No Pressure – Except What I Put on Myself

To be honest, I didn’t need Wunderwelt Libre to know that I tend to put more pressure on myself than is necessary. Wunderwelt are very chill about how many articles you write or how often. The once a fortnight schedule has been thrown on entirely by myself. Part of it is that I like routine and consistency. It keeps me organised and actually keeps me going, even if sometimes for the pure reason of not wanting to fail (said failure being, of course, imaginary and only in my own head). I know that if I decided only to write when I felt like I had something major to say, I would barely write at all there because those ideas would compete with the blog. Which leads me to my next point:

Combating self-imposed deadlines is the biggest lesson here.

Not Everything Must be Major

In a way the once a fortnight schedule actually helped me relax a little bit. Before I would’ve dismissed some article ideas as too silly or ‘there’s already loads about that on the internet’. But if I’m holding myself to a schedule and don’t want to repeat ideas from my own blog, then I gotta be less strict with myself about topics. In the process I discovered that I really liked putting theoretical coords (Wunderwelt’s stock photos make it really easy to create neat collages). Besides, Wunderwelt Libre doesn’t seem like a place aspiring to lead in cutting-edge investigative journalism, so I could keep all those ‘serious’ ideas to myself and keep my posts there more light-hearted and relaxed.

I can sit back and enjoy writing 'silly' posts now.

Hoarding Points Like a Dragon

Wunderwelt rewards articles with points in their shop. At first they’d issue me a secret code for ¥500 off, which had to be used within a month, but whether because of my relentless pace or because that system didn’t work very well, they quickly switched to just adding the points to your account. And my hoarder dragon instincts kicked in almost instantly. It’s so much fun watching those points grow! It also makes it easier on my wallet, as I can supplement any purchases with those points. Although these days I tend to save them until I find something on Wunderwelt that I know I absolutely must have.

This is what collecting Wunderwelt points feels like!

Levelling Up Some Skills

The blog uses WordPress, which is a pretty neat little platform. I particularly like the SEO and readability tools. Each post is RAG rated (red, amber or green) based on how well it’s search engine optimised and how easy to read it is. At the bottom it breaks that down into individual criteria, which are also RAG rated. It took some time getting used to it, but after a year I have noticed big improvements in my writing. Whereas at the beginning my first draft would always be red in both categories, it’s now usually green in SEO and amber-to-green in readability. This means less time spent tinkering with the article to satisfy my perfectionist nature in getting those double green lights and more time for other things.

Gimme all them green lights!

I Miss Reader Interactions

However great writing for Wunderwelt Libre might be, I know that it will never replace this blog or entice me to quit here. For one simple, yet important reason: being able to interact with you, the readers. While I appreciate that having a comments section on Wunderwelt Libre would require more time to moderate it, there have been times where I really wanted to know people’s thoughts and opinions. I feel like if there was more direct reader-writer interaction (Wunderwelt’s FB page is a bit too much of everything to make that feasible), it’d help us make better content and cater to the kind of posts that the readers wish to see. (So if you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see over there, don’t hesitate to let me know in any way you can think of.)

It's thanks to all of you that I improve the most.

So what’s in store now? Definitely more Wunderwelt Libre articles. The entire experience is massively enjoyable, above all else, so I’d like to continue that whilst I can. I’ll probably also keep the once a fortnight schedule, although the aim is to be kinder to myself if I can’t think of anything to write about. As I was writing this post, I’ve had some ideas on what other posts I could do in the future, taking some inspiration from the Japanese version of the blog. My biggest wish in all this is that writing for Wunderwelt Libre never becomes a chore or eats too much out of my free time. As long as that’s the case, I will carry on writing for them. And if anyone out there has been thinking whether to join their writing team, I strongly encourage you to do so!