How I failed at Technical Writing Bootcamp

How I failed at Technical Writing Bootcamp

ยท

5 min read

First of all, I would like to thank Hashnode and their entire team including Syed Fazle Rahman, Sandeep Panda, Edidiong Asikpo, and everyone else who organized this for free and helped the community to get better at technical writing.

I would also like to extend my special thanks to all the speakers who took their time out of their busy lives to teach us something.

Thank you Catalin Pit for all the great writing tips.

Thank you Omotola Shogunle for the immensely beautiful slides full of practical tips.

Thank you Tapas Adhikary for teaching us how to be consistent. I am trying to follow that. It helped me a lot.

Thank you Victoria Lo for all your content and tips to write a great About page.

I'm thankful to each one of you guys personally. The first Technical Writing Bootcamp went really well. I am sure everyone enjoyed and learned from it.

Let's talk about my failures now. ๐Ÿง

My First Failure

Before the Bootcamp, I tried to follow the #2Articles1Week challenge and I failed in my first week itself. I thought I might not be able to do it. I blamed my day job and all the other work and personal commitments. So, I moved on and waited for the right time to start it again.

But that right time never came until this Bootcamp.

My Second Failure

I felt special when I got selected for the first batch of the Technical Writing Bootcamp. Not everybody got a chance to join the first batch.

Although, I failed at attending the first session by Catalin Pit. I felt bad that I couldn't make it.

Fortunately, Syed Fazle Rahman and Hashnode team provided the recorded video later so we could watch and learn from it.

My Third Failure

I failed to attend the first session live and I found myself in the same situation for the next sessions. But I still somehow managed to attend the rest of the sessions.

I wanted to sit relaxed and enjoy the session but I couldn't. I could have managed my time better and attend the sessions with my full attention but I was distracted a couple of times. Overall, I learned a lot but I missed some of the points in the middle of these sessions.

My Fourth Failure

I couldn't complete the tasks for each session on their respective deadlines. I was sort of disappointed in myself as I couldn't cope up and manage my time. There was a moment when I thought that I should withdraw myself from this as I didn't think that I would be able to complete it at all.

Fortunately, the Hashnode team announced that we could submit our articles till 5th Oct. So this gave me another chance and this time I didn't want to fail. So I spent most of my Sunday, writing the articles and finally published them around at 1.30 AM.

I wrote the following articles for the Bootcamp:

โญ History of Javascript

โญ Why should you learn Javascript

โญ Variable declaration in Javascript

โญ Variable Types in Javascript

This is my About page that I wrote from the tips provided by Victoria Lo:

๐ŸŒŸ About Me


Victoria Lo liked my About page and featured it on one of her articles:

10 About Pages on Hashnode to Blow Your Mind

This was an unexpected but happy surprise.


This is how it looked like on the day I published all these posts:

2020-10-08.png

I received almost 300 views in a single day. This was a big deal for me. I have never received more than 30 views in a single day even on my best day in the past when I was blogging on my WordPress blog.

Out of those 30 views that I used to receive daily on my WordPress blog in the past, 20 views were from the random spammers who visited my blog just to tell me that some random woman wanted to meet me that night.

Hashnode and every single one of you helped me to get 300 real views in a day. It felt incredibly good.

Special Thanks ๐Ÿ™

I can't thank the Hashnode team and speakers enough for this Bootcamp. But there is someone behind the curtains who helped me to actually turn my failures into success at the last moment.

I met Maggie Negm on the Hashnode Discord server by some random encounter. I wouldn't have completed the Bootcamp at the last moment if it wasn't for her support and motivation.

Thank you so much Maggie for your time, post reviews, valuable feedback, motivation, and constant support.

How all of this helped me?

Well, every major change starts with the minor ones. This entire Bootcamp experience and meeting new people helped me with many things.

  1. I try to follow all the learnings that I received from the Bootcamp speakers.
  2. Finally I am on a path to be consistent at writing. I am submitting two articles for this week by following the last week.
  3. I already have 1 article ready for the next week so I don't fail again.
  4. I finally know how to prioritize and what to prioritize. I have had the busiest week due to all the work that I had to finish and yet I somehow managed to write the articles for my blog. This is a big change for me.
  5. I am trying to meet people and make connections online as it is very important to learn from each other and grow at the same time.

Final Words

After multiple full/partial failures, I finally feel a sense of accomplishment that I completed the tasks before 5th October and submitted them all at once.

This one success was enough to fade every other failure that I faced throughout this journey.

Once again, I want to thank the entire Hashnode team, speakers, community, and my friend Maggie for everything that you guys did for me, directly and indirectly, to make me a better version of myself and to help me grow one step further.

Cheers! ๐ŸŽ‰

ย