Phew! It feels like forever since I announced I’d be going on a hiatus. This summer has been a full one, with both good and hard things taking up my time.
About a month ago, I had the day off and went to a nearby art museum, both to see the exhibits of course, but also to take some time and reflect specifically on what I wanted to do moving forward with this blog.
I want to share not only my decisions, but also a little of my process of reflecting that led to them, both so you can hopefully understand why I’m making them, and also in case any part of the process is helpful to you when you have decisions to make.
Whenever I’m trying to figure out if I want to keep doing a part of my platform or where to put my focus, I always return to my author mission statement: To create diverse and authentic stories that comfort and enlarge readers.
My number one focus is creating stories, ideally that will be shared with others. Can posting on Instagram and having a blog and running an Etsy shop help with that in some ways? Absolutely! But if they end up taking time away from writing and I’m just doing them out of obligation, then my priorities aren’t really in order.
When I started this blog, I was a student and working part-time. I was busy, but I still had chunks of free time that allowed me to publish a post every week and have plenty of time to write. At the start of 2020, I moved into a full-time position, which is obviously great in lots of ways, but meant I had significantly less free time.
Blogging began to feel like it was taking away the limited amount of time I had to spend on writing my books. On top of that, it felt like to really make the blog successful, I needed to devote even more time to it, by promoting it more and interacting with other bloggers and all the things to make my blog visible—which felt like fighting an uphill battle in a time when blogging isn’t nearly as popular as it was years ago. So taking several months off felt like a relief in some ways, and allowed me to focus more energy on my top goal: writing.
But…there are a few things that make me not ready to let go of my blog entirely. For one thing, I’ve spent three years now putting a lot of time and energy into creating (at least what I think are) useful resources. I didn’t want to let that all become stagnant. I also felt bad leaving my “Self-Publishing Guide for Beginners” series half-finished, both because it feels like a useful resource and also because when I was researching for self-pub help, I found so many half-finished series like this and it was frustrating!
Also, I really love how blogging created opportunities—that I could email the publicist of an author I’ve totally fangirled over, and say “I have a blog” and they were often willing to let me interview the author! And I loved then sharing that author’s guidance and personality with all of you.
As far as articles about writing tips, though, I feel like I’ve found other mediums conductive to sharing writing advice, namely Instagram through sort of “microblogging” and of course my monthly newsletter. So I feel like I can continue to share what I’m learning, without writing a blog post constantly.
With all of that rattling around my head, I felt like I was a little bit in a stalemate. I didn’t what to let go of my blog completely, but also I wasn’t sure that it was the best way to spend my time.
So…now what?
Here’s what I’ve decided to do moving forward with the blog.
I just can’t justify spending time writing a weekly post. But since I want the blog to stay fairly up-to-date, I’m going to aim for one post a month.
These will sometimes be writing craft related, but that content will mostly be on my Instagram and email newsletter. Instead, these posts will be more focused on author interviews and also finishing my self-publishing guide.
I’m also going to work through my back catalog of posts—120 of them! I want to update them with new information I’ve learned, focus on SEO to increase traffic, fit them into my new brand style, and add all posts to Medium to increase chances of being read. I’ll be sharing revamped blog posts in my email newsletter so that you don’t miss any new tips I’ve discovered!
So that’s my plan going forward: Keeping things fresh and useful, but still leaving room for my top priority: writing.