I've always had a habit of creative procrastination.
My first finals season in graduate school, I learned how Tumblr works. My second finals season I learned how to juggle four balls while walking. (this amazing skill has yet to get me anywhere but I still have hope it will come in handy one day) When I've studied as much as humanly possible, I look for other ways to use up that nervous energy.
That's how I believe my first blog started. It was so many years ago-- almost seven, which may not sound like a super impressive number but when you start a blog in high school, and then find yourself in graduate school...well, a lot has happened between now and then. But I'm pretty sure I decided to make a photography blog because I was procrastinating from some homework/exam/studying. I had just discovered how much I loved taking photos, and I wanted a space to share that excitement.
Flash forward many years, and my old photography blog had worn many hats, but none of them particularly well. I tried genres (photography, crafting, lifestyle, travel, cooking, etc) like people flip through channels on a TV. I wondered why I could never seem to gain a following or find a community until the obvious finally hit me-- I was too eclectic. I was trying to talk about way too many subjects.
I settled on just one subject that I had always been passionate about-- books. My friends were surely tired of hearing me opine for ages on the latest book I had just finished, so I decided to take my copious amounts of words and use them to create a new blog-- this one!
(really this is just me preaching to myself but if you find this helpful, great!)
- Be consistent. Find a schedule-- twice a week, three times a week, whatever-- and stick to it. Obviously this won't always be possible (hello grad school) but if you consistently churn on good content, I believe that readers will come. And with readers comes comments and connecting with other people and isn't that what this entire endeavor is really about?
- Be on theme. Obviously book blogs don't have to be exclusively about books but I need to remind myself that if I want to do well in a certain area then I need to stick with it-- not wander off when cooking sounds like a fun post oh but what about nature post but what about-- no. The majority of my content should be book-focused, with fun asides every now and then.
Please do consider yourself, dear reader, as honorarily tagged! Tell me your origin story and your advice to new bloggers. Leave links to your post in the comments below.
No comments