The Evolution of a Blog

My very first post was on September 15th, 2009 - That's six years of blogging - wow. I never would have imagined.

Today I had reason to look back through my posts and I was really amazed by how it had evolved. At first, when I was so shy about writing online, the only thing I could think of to do with a blog was to post samplings of some of my writing. I could only do that for so long though before I started to repeat myself. Then, on the 19th of February, 2010, on the advice of others online saying I should be willing to give something away, I created a blog novel. You'll have to be patient with the structure of a blog to read this book, but I tried to make it easy. There is a table of contents. Thanks to a donation through this blog, I was able to buy the shown cover and then on 5th of January, 2013, I published it through CreateSpace. That was almost the very first thing I did with Amazon, and it has become my preferred publishing platform.

But I digress - I get ahead of myself.

Not long after starting my blog novel, thanks to a very non-writerly rant on this blog, I came to realize that I might be able to use a personal blog as well. So, on the 14th of June, 2010, I created Anna of Alaska, named after a book a friend of mine wanted me to write. I tried, but I just can't write about myself in book format, so this was something of a compromise.

That makes three blogs to maintain. It might seem like a lot, but somehow I managed. The last chapter of the blog novel was posted on the 20th of April, 2012, which made it a little over three years old. Other than keeping side panels updated, there is nothing more to do there. I do have a wordpress blog, but I almost never post there.

Over the years, this blog evolved to being my interpretation of writing techniques, usually in response to some book I read or something I saw online.

Over the years, I too have evolved. I've gone from a non-stop writer, tucking book after book under my belt to a blogger and platform builder. I think I've done pretty good on that but my writing has greatly suffered. Now I edit more than I write, and I'm talking about editing my own books mostly, because I still have some to get out there, but I've also taken on some paid editing jobs, and most recently, a ghost writing job.

At work over the last three years, with about +/-3 hours of free time during the afternoon, I took my computer to work so I could continue working on whatever I was working on, be it editing or writing. During the summer before this last summer, my boss kept worrying that I wasn't getting my job done. So, last summer, I decided not to take my computer to work at all. Instead, I took my kindle and was either on Facebook or reading. With an 11 hour day, I was in no shape to do anything by the end of the day.

I ended up allowing the whole thing to get to me more than I thought it would, and I've been off my game ever since.

My new year's resolution was to climb back in the saddle. I'm pretty sure I can hang onto the saddle horn because I also quit that job for a job across the river and much closer to an 8 hour day. Plus I get to dig back into the garden I'd spent 14 years developing. I missed that garden. But that's for some other post, probably on my personal blog.

So, though distractions abound, and they always will, I'll buckle down and get on with my writing, in one form or another. Be patient with me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~