Baby Steps Down The Blogging Road

It’s been a hectic week. I think – honestly, don’t remember much of it anymore. I managed to stick to my writing schedule for the first time in weeks, and been productive both at the work that pays me and the work I love (victory is the day those two are one and the same), which is great, but it hasn’t left much time as I wanted to do more research about blogging.

So we’re kind of winging it this week. There may be rambling. You were warned.

From the time I committed myself to taking writing seriously and started to fully devote myself to it, the end-result has always been self-publishing. As a research and organizational freak who loves being prepared, I started educating myself on self-publishing and everything around early on. Beta-readers, editing, cover art, publishing-options; anything and everything. Including that one dreaded topic; marketing. It was here that I realized blogging was the self-marketing tool that I needed the most right now; the most important thing for me to research, since everything else was (still is) so far away.

And yet I have done more research about everything else than I have about blogging, until very recently. That’s because I always knew and expected to have to learn those other things, but for some reason I managed to suppress the idea of starting a blog for a long time.

When I first realized that blogging was by far the best place to start introducing my writer-self to the world, I panicked. Blogging?! I can’t do that! I have zero interpersonal skills! I hate talking about myself, as everyone who knows me (including my therapist) can attest to. I’m not even good at talking about my projects in a coherent way.

I was convinced that a blog by me would repel rather than attract any potential readers.

Then I started doing it. Blindly, of course, with no idea what I was doing or how I wanted to do it. All I knew was that I wanted to talk about writing and about my stories. I wanted to get my writing out there, which is why I started writing short stories (also a new concept for me) and the online series. I figured it was a great way to introduce people to the world of Hurst, to gain their interest, and then I could start blogging about Hurst regularly rather than about myself, which sounded a lot more appealing.

But getting my short stories and online series to reach people hasn’t been easy. I’m not good at asking people for re-tweets and shares, and though there are a few lovely people who do it without me having to ask, I don’t exactly have a wide following. And honestly, I never expected any kind of substantial traffic during the first year or two of blogging anyway, so I’m not losing sleep over it. I’m learning by doing, and at some point in the future, I would like to be better at this, which is why I am constantly trying to educate myself on the subject.

Learning about blogging has been an interesting experience, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn. That part shocked me, because I was under the impression that I would hate everything about blogging. I don’t. In fact, I love having a place to put my stories out, even if only five people read them. I love getting to pour my heart out about whatever writing-mood I am in each Saturday. A sentence I never thought I would use; I’m actually starting to enjoy blogging.

But I still have so much to learn. What people do and don’t want to read, what I want to write about, how to get people to notice… I’ve written a few posts now about the things I’ve learned and studied. Next week, I’m going to try something else. Next Saturday I’m going to write a post about something that I’ve been wanting to blog about since before I even started; World-building and Hurst.

It’s going to be a test-run to see how I fare when writing about the thing I intentionally set out to do in the first place. I’m nervous and excited. Let’s see how this goes.

Sorry about this one being a bit random and disorganized – hope to do better next week! Until then, stay beautiful and productive.

Rain S.