I'm blogging every day. Here's a short series on the why, how, and what's of it.
- Why Blog Every Day (this post)
- How to Blog Every Day
- What to Blog Every Day
Back in 2008, I asked the question how much time should professional writers spend blogging? The answer to that became my mantra. Which is to say writing novels always took precedence over blogging, or to think of it another way, any time spent writing blog posts is time better spent working on my novels instead.
Recently, though, I decided to try something new: Blogging every day.
I'm not removing the emphasis from the work on my novels (progress on the second book in The Alchemancer series is going quite well, by the way), but I'm also re-emphasizing the importance of my blog by taking up this regime. I won't literally be writing a new blog post every day--I'm giving myself Sunday off as well as holidays. But, so far, I've been going strong since October 26 when I blogged about my Smashwords eBook sale. By the time this post makes it out I'll be over 30 days straight (minus days off as mentioned). While this is a great pace for this little experiment of mine, I don't know that it's sustainable. It seems like eventually I'll run out of ideas or time or simple desire to keep up with it. But, for now, I'm all in.
So why blog every day in the first place? Here's 3 reasons:
1. It promotes good writing habits
By blogging every day I'm injecting order into my daily routine. I work at home now, which sounds like a panacea (and is at times), but when I've got something going on at the day job that I know is going to consume my day, having other commitments really pushes me to prioritize and do those first. There are all kinds of other distractions too, so having a daily deadline keeps me focused. Also, by having a blogging schedule, I'm committed to writing something. What I write about is not so much as important as the act itself.
2. It pushes me to write better
The only way to become a better writer is to practice. Blogging gives me a medium to explore my skills, take chances, and try new things without anyone criticizing me for it (no one's going to leave a crappy review of one of my posts on Amazon, in other words). You can argue that writing a blog post isn't the same thing as writing a story, which is true. That's why I hope to also start blogging writing samples—short excerpts of what might someday become a tale unto itself. These are the sorts of posts I'm most looking forward to.
3. It provides alternative creative outlets
Blogging allows me to break away from my fantasy world and write about "other things". This is important first and foremost to keep from getting burned out writing the same content all of the time. Second, it pushes me to continue to learn about the craft because the blogging form is so much different from telling a story.
Next post in the series I'll jump into the "how's" of blogging every day.
More Reading
Join my reader's group and get The Hall of Riddles (An Alchemancer Prequel) and The Assassin's Dilemma (An Assassin Without a Name Prequel) as a welcome gift.