To Blog or Not to Blog?
To blog or not to blog?
That is the question many are dwelling on at the moment. Some bloggers have given up, some have switched to Substack and some have decided to concentrate on newsletters.
I started this blog in the autumn of 2010 and love the fact that many subscribers have been with me since then (thank you! – and I hope we’ll continue to be virtual friends). I’ve gained a lot from blogging, including discipline (it’s not easy to dream up topics to blog about), contacts (it’s so lovely when people take the time to ‘like’ or comment, especially on a regular basis) and knowledge (from the lovely guest bloggers I’ve hosted and from research I’ve done for my own posts). I hope you’ve all gained something from it too!
For me, the answer to my initial question is: Continue to Blog.
I’ve thought about Substack but don’t know enough about it or how it beats a standard blog. If you’ve got experience – please enlighten me because I never seem to have the time to investigate it fully.
I have a newsletter but, so far, I’ve only used that for significant book or writing news rather than the general information and titbits I put on here. If you’re curious, signup here. Plus casual browsers stumble across this blog in a way that they wouldn’t find back issues of a newsletter.
I don’t want to abandon communicating with writers and readers because it’s taken a long time to capture you all (!) and I think an online presence is important.
So, you’ll find me here for a bit longer.
I’ve just looked back through my WordPress statistics to find out which have been my most popular pages over the last 13 years. Here are the top four:
Icebreakers for Creative Writing Adult Education Classes
The Seven Sisters Series by Lucinda Riley
The statistics for 2023 show that I wrote 31 blog posts and August 15th was the day this site got the most hits, which was also the day I published the post about My First RNA Conference and an Award.
Finally, given this is the start of a brand new year and many of us are setting goals and challenges, here are a few publications that might be useful:
For those dipping a toe in the world of self-publishing – Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners and Kobo Writing Life Publishing for Absolute Beginners.
For those wanting to build self-confidence or to promote their books via author talks:
Public Speaking for Absolute Beginners.
