It seems that I’m constantly in a state of retooling my writing career, moving from one area to the next a bit like construction projects at a university campus. And every time that I start to retool something else, the blog gets neglected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, it’s time to retool the blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of months ago, I tried blogging every day to see how that would work out. Long story short: it didn’t. I found that I either need to focus a ton of energy on the blog, to build a consistent readership, monetize it efficiently, and turn it into its own thing, or else I need to downsize it into something that won’t drain too much energy or resources from all the other things that I’m doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t want to get rid of it entirely. I’ve been blogging since 2007, and while I haven’t been consistent about it all through that time, I’m invested enough in it that I don’t want to take it down. The nice thing about blogs, though, is that they wait for you. They’re kind of like hobbies, in that regard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That makes sense, though, because up to this point I’ve treated this blog as more of a hobby than an actual job. And I’ve never fully integrated the blog itself into my writing\/publishing workflow, which is why I’m struggling to justify it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started the blog in 2007, it was mainly a vehicle to keep in touch with my writing friends (who all had their own blogs too) and encourage each other. Then, when I started publishing, it turned into a platform-building tool\u2014a way to brand myself as an author. But it was never much good for promoting my books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, as my politics began to change, I made the mistake of bringing those politics onto this blog. Then social media began to become really toxic for me, and I decided to pull back. I deleted my Facebook and Twitter, and consciously pared back what I posted to this blog. But politics was what I was interested at the time, so paring that back to avoid damaging my author brand meant that I neglected the blog even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last two years, I’ve focused a lot more on my email newsletter. At first, it was just a way to notify my readers of new releases. Then, I started doing free and 99\u00a2 sales regularly, and it turned into a way to alert my readers of those. Now, it’s a full-on newsletter, complete with a featured book, a writing update, an author’s note with some personal thoughts and reflections, links to any group promotions I have books in, and a parting quote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what’s the point of sharing writing updates and personal reflections here, on the blog, when I’m already doing it on my newsletter? I suppose the blog has two advantages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was talking about this with Mrs. Vasicek today, and she asked if there was any reason why I couldn’t repost the content from my newsletter onto the blog as well. There doesn’t seem to be any harm in it. I don’t think my readers are signing up for exclusive content so much as to keep in touch with my books and my writing. Besides, some readers just don’t do email lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other than that, I’m not sure what I’ll use this blog for. I need to put some thought into it. But if I’m going to downsize it, I need to turn it into a side feature of my online platform, not the main vehicle for that platform itself. That means I need to restructure this site, turning into an author site with a blog on the side, rather than a blog with some book pages on the side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not going away, though. I’m just retooling. The newsletter will be my main vehicle for sharing updates from now on, though I may do a long-form blog post from time to time. I may also experiment with blogging some of my books, or doing a blog series with the aim of turning it into a book later. If there’s anything else you think might work well, be sure to let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems that I’m constantly in a state of retooling my writing career, moving from one area to the next a bit like construction projects at a university campus. And every time that I start to retool something else, the blog gets neglected. Well, it’s time to retool the blog. A couple of months ago,… Continue reading Rethinking the blog<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,390,89,46],"class_list":["post-12596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-about-this-blog","tag-blogging","tag-career-decisions","tag-goals-and-plans","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3ha","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12599,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12596\/revisions\/12599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}