Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the April 3 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia!!
April 3: How long have you been blogging? (Or on Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram?) What do you like about it and how has it changed?
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That seems like an odd one to kick off a blog with, no "Hi! I'm Samantha and I'm a writer" confession? No big pronouncements about what I intended to do with the space? So maybe I had something before this and I've forgotten.
If so, well, I've forgotten.
From the look of it, I took off in fits and starts. 14 posts in all of 2009, only 3 in all of 2010…and there it is! 2014, the year I committed more fully to my writing life and wrote 112 blog posts apparently.
That makes sense. I committed in a daily writing habit that year, starting a chain that remains unbroken a decade later. I had a goal of posting once a week, I remember, and it looks like I blew that out of the water! Go past me!
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Blogging has definitely changed for me over time. At first, it was just a way to make myself put some words out there into the world more often. Sort of a public diary about whatever was on my mind. It was about building a habit of writing and sharing it.
These days, I don't need my blog for those same reasons--I write every day and publish regularly enough to keep up some semblance of a writing career. But I still value having my own little piece of the web. It's a sort of record of my journey, at least for this section of my life, and since I'm bad at record-keeping in general, it's nice to have.
Even though Blogger isn't well supported anymore and that gives me technical trouble from time to time, and even though I have need of a more robust and navigable website, I haven't moved it over. That's part nostalgia and part inertia probably. Plus I've got books to write! I don't really want to spend too much time and energy on my website.
Sometimes "keeping up with the blog" feels like too big a chore alongside finishing the latest novel, promoting my published work, attending conventions, etc. I never let it go entirely, but I don't stress too much about whether I put something out once a week anymore, or spend too much time obsessing over metrics and numbers.
Some of my posts have found a broad audience. Others were visited by twenty or so folks who probably all know me in real life (Hi, Mom!).
That's okay. These posts are still ripples in the stream and have the chance to build into career-building waves.
My posting these days is more about networking with other writers and bloggers (like you guys!), a bit of self-promotion for my writing life, and just making sure that SEO crawlers find a LOT of content with my name on it out there. Discoverability, baby!
We all do what we can, right?
It's cool to see your yearly blog posts since you started blogging. I think you've nailed what's still good about blogging, with networking with other writers and bloggers being at the top of the list.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely what I enjoy. Community is everything.
DeleteNetworking is just as important. And it's very rewarding.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely!
DeleteI loved your first post, Samantha! So real and so emotionally true! I always am drawn to the heart in writing. I have blogged since August 2012, and I will continue to do so. Have a great day!
ReplyDeleteBlogging is so old school it's almost new school again.
DeleteAs long as we are doing something, it should be enough. :-)
ReplyDelete\ Anna from elements of emaginette
I love that!
DeleteI'm pretty sure my first ever blog post was about football. I don't remember if my team won or loss, so I'm going to say they won, and that it was a celebratory post.
ReplyDeleteThese days, if I manage to post at all, it's about once a month and mostly writing-related. And if I don't feel like posting, I skip it. It's all good.
Regularity is only part of the equation, and we all have to pick where to use our spoons on any given day.
DeleteBlogging is new again to new generations. I'm old enough to have seen that "everything that goes around will come around" again. Thanks for visiting my blog on Wednesday. -Teresa
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of truth in that!
DeleteMy first post was definitely announcing myself as writer with a book. I don't have that blog anymore so I can't go and check out what exactly I said.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I would have thought mine would be, or at least announcing my intentions, since it was 2009 and I didn't have a published book until 2015.
DeleteYour paragraph about keeping up with the blog feeling like too much of a chore really resonated with me. I won't let mine go either, but like you, I've stopped obsessing about posting every week or about tracking numbers. I did that for awhile, and it stopped being fun pretty quickly.
ReplyDeleteMetrics exhaust me.
Delete