I write every day. It has been my lifetime habit which I cannot abandon anymore. If I don't write in a day, I will feel anxious due to the many ideas kept inside my mind. I don't care about making grammatical mistakes in my writings. As long as the readers get my point, the grammatical mistakes are not a big problem for them.
Sometimes, I send my articles to national Indonesian magazine such as Flona, and Intisari. I received Rp. 350,000 per article. It is equivalent to 35 US dollars. Not much money for western standard. But it is enough to feed a small simple family in this country for one week.
I write feature articles. The topics range from environment to the application of renewable energy. The latest one, which I sent to Flona was Floral Tourism in Tincep Village of North Sulawesi.
Before writing feature article, I usually choose a topic which I believe attractive. Then I begin writing. I don't make paragraph plan. I just write. In academic writing it is called Free Writing. I put all things that I know in my mind about the topic that is being written.
When I have finished the free writing stage, then I carry on to the next stage which is reorganizing the paragraphs according to the content or sentences. I will group sentences that are related to one another. Then, I will arrange them into a good reading.
The final check is deleting unnecessary phrases, sentences and correcting the grammatical mistakes. When all these stages have been done, I leave it for one or two days. Sometimes I leave it for one week. I will write other articles.
After one week, I will go back to the article and review it again. At this time, I put some additional phrases and grammatical corrections. When I really feel satisfied with the article, I will send it right away to a magazine.
Usually, I have to wait for up to three months before receiving a notification from the editors that I have to confirm my bank account number. That's the moment which I really wait. by Charles Roring in Manokwari Indonesia.
