So I’m coming up on my one year anniversary of blogging. My writer’s journey has been a long one to get to this point. This is by far the best I’ve ever done with keeping a blog going, and I’m feeling good about keeping it for a long time to come. But it took several other blogs and a lot of reading and encouragement from other bloggers to get to this point.
So what changed that made this blog something I could keep?
- I wrote down why I’m doing this: Not everyone has a manifesto. I decided to do one, which you can read here. I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job with it. It’s changed a little, so maybe for my anniversary, I’ll write a new one. But it helped in the beginning to decide the rules of the blog. It will continue to change and morph a little here and there, but guidelines are good for everyone.
- 2. I made a schedule, and I kept it: In other words, it’s a priority. Every Friday the first thing I do is get coffee and sit down to write my blog posts for the next week. If I’ve already done that, I write at least two more. The consistency of writing and scheduling has made this a priority and a habit. And when I don’t do this, it throws off my groove.
- I allowed myself to fail: There have been moments where I missed a week of blogging because of the real world. In the past, I would have just given up and either stopped blogging altogether or started a new blog. But this time, I let myself fail and then continued going.
- I allowed myself to change: When I started this blog, I thought it would be about stories of all kinds, and I do still mention them here and there. It quickly turned into a book blog where I focused for a couple of months, but I also wanted to talk more about writing. So I’ve morphed it again into a blog about reading and writing. This finally feels like me. And I think it was a necessary journey. If I had waited until I felt like everything was perfect, I never would have started this blog, let alone found my niche. Sometimes you have to wander a bit to figure out where you’re going.
- I read a lot: My other blogs and writing ventures were isolated. And looking back, I was trying to start from scratch and learn it all on my own. But this time I’ve entered blogging groups, read other blogs, taken classes, upped my game with reading books, and joined a fiction writer’s group. Not all of these are blog specific, but surrounding myself with people that enjoy reading and writing has helped me to learn from their mistakes, and kept reading and writing and a priority.
What about your writer’s journey? What is something that has helped you focus on writing or blogging, or whatever your passion maybe?
