Slowing it down…

Going from a ton of posts down to one per week is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I love blogging. I would blog every day if I could. But with all the new releases and all the edits I have to do this year, it’s just not feasible for me to do my writing AND blog like I want to. There has to be a line drawn and a decision made and since I’m getting paid to write books, that has to take precedence.

But it never occurred to me that blogging once a week is effective, but it is. There are award-winning blogs out there that only post once a week. The thing of it is… They’re consistent. They blog once a week, slightly longer than most blog posts, but they pack a lot of information into it. In fact, it came from a particular post, written by Todd Seiling called the Slow Blog Manifesto.

Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy. It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly, and that many thoughts are best served after being fully baked and worded in an even temperament.

So what is it, really? It’s an essay written in 2006 by Canadian software designer Todd Sieling. It was written at the height of the everybody-must-get-a-blog frenzy.

There’s a lot of advice out there for authors these days, one of the most repeated is “You must blog THREE TIMES A WEEK to be successful!”

Hey guys, you can be successful without killing yourself trying to blog. A blog can help a new author establish a web presence. It’s an important part of the platform. It’s a foundation. But a Slow Blog can do all that too, and leave you time to like, write or maybe play Tetris if you’re like me.

So unless you’re Chuck Wendig and capable of spitting out a thousand words on a blog every morning, you might want to consider that thousand words once a week. And Chuck probably doled out my favorite blogging advice on that post as well:

All blogging is just squawking into the void. It’s free. It’s a soapbox on which you stand and bark your brain-think into the world. Be yourself. Talk about what you want to talk about. Authenticity and interest will garner readers well beyond plopping out rote, formulaic posts because they are somehow “expected.”

I might have an internet crush on him.

So this is my plan. I’m blogging once a week. I think a lot of it is going to writing-related, I might even do the occasional review, just because I sort of hate that unspoken rule that authors shouldn’t review books and it’s in my nature to challenge shit. There might be an extra post every once in a while, if I have book news or a cover reveal or stuff like that (all of which my Fabulous Minions get before anyone else!). I love the craft of writing, I love social media, and I love hockey. Those things pop up fairly frequently for me.

The main point I’m making here is that I want to go on loving to blog, and if i do it every day, eventually I will tire of it. So I’m forcing myself to slow down, and enjoy it. I’m allowing myself the freedom to blog about what i want to, when I want to. And this new schedule will allow me to get through my outrageous and superhuman release schedule this year.

So don’t be afraid to put your email into that little blog subscriber box right there. I’m not going to flood your inbox. In fact, while you’re filling out forms, considering joining my Fabulous Minions newsletter. You can click on that link or fill out the sidebar form.

Now that I’ve said what I want to say, I’m going to sign off here and go write on that book that needs to be done by the end of the month.

Got something to say? Tell me all about it in the comments! I love hearing from you!