When I first started blogging in 2018, I did so because I wanted to write more. I wanted to write more because, as everyone knows, one trains for writing like one trains for sport: with a focus on repetition and technique. I felt that if I published my work on the internet it’d keep me honest on both counts. I thought that making my work available to the internet would force me to make my writing clear and concise. The more often I wrote, I assumed, the easier it would be. Finally, I was interested to see if my writing would elicit interest. So, after 6 years, what is the end result? Have I gained any useful skills and what sort of writing is the blogging format best suited for? Which posts elicited interest…and which posts elicited a thundering silence, the dreaded “crickets”?
Just before I started to blog, I had tried to instill the habit of journaling. It never really took because I lacked consistency and focus. My ideas were literally all over the page, too disjointed. I was desperately trying to have a “style” rather than authentically expressing myself. In short, my writing was trash. I then thought that if I focused on creating short-form content that interested me, it would definitely help with the former and possibly even the latter. So, I began to blog.
One thing I quickly learned was that I was not going to post nearly as much as I thought I would. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve posted a fair amount, but my dreams of posting on a daily or even weekly basis were, in retrospect, charmingly optimistic. However, I definitely write more often than I used to and, in many ways, it’s become easier to “just do it”. I think I’ve learned some internal mental processes for arranging my thoughts. Pride forced me to do some due diligence. I read a lot of blog posts on a wide range of subjects to see what worked best. I quickly saw that for the most part people wrote blog posts to share information (current events, recipes, advertising for upcoming events, etc) or to express themselves (poetry, short stories and the like) or, in many cases, a combination of both. I like to think that this blog falls into that hybrid category.
The subject matter of many of my posts reflects what is happening in my life: dating, parenting and training for powerlifting, to name a few. Sometimes an idea for a post springs organically from my subconscious based on something I’ve observed or a thought that has been ruminating for a while. I’ve learned to write down the basic idea asap or, yea verily, it risks being lost forever as my adhd attention span moves on to something else. Blogging is not just fun, but it offers me some capacity to examine and process my thoughts and emotions.
I have found that there are some limitations to blogging, at least the way in which I practice it. While I remain anonymous on my blog, I nevertheless do not write often about highly personal subjects. Journaling is more suited to that sort of introspection if, alas, I could make it a habit. And ultimately my real interest in writing is to write fiction. Blogging helps in that I write more often, but I don’t feel as if it’s thus far helped me to find my voice or even less the techniques needed for that format. At the risk of sounding defeatist, I wouldn’t bother posting beginner forays in short-story writing as blog posts. I’ve tried reading some blogs that concentrate on this genre and I’ll admit I never make it past the first paragraph. Might as well save the money and not post it on the internet for nobody to see.
My posts that have garnered the most interest in the past 6 years have been about recipes/food related, dating, blogging and fitness related, in roughly that order. The blog posts I care the most about, that I work the hardest on and have the most personal content, usually elicit little or no interest. Some of my most successful posts are weird and/or topical “one off” ideas that I wrote up quickly. C’est la vie. One conclusion to be drawn from that is removing ego as much as possible from the outcome seems to work better.
If you write a blog, why did you start and why do you continue? How has it met your expectations and where has it fallen short?
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