Hello friends and welcome to day 2 of Bookending Spring! Today's prompts from Jayati is all about how we blog. And let me tell you, it's a hot mess here at Ruby's Books. Before we get started, remember to check out Jayati's original post about Pre-scheduling and organizing your blog ft. mood blogging.
Let's begin!
Pre-scheduling and organizing your blog ft. mood blogging
In 9 years of doing this book blogging thing, I've done it all. I've done prescheduling, which cleared up a lot of time in advance and got rid of the headaches, but it also gave me a fake sense of freedom and of "Oh I can do whatever I want with my time", I've done the mood blogging and went with the flow, both from a writing inspiration point of view and from a mental disposition perspective, which means I was writing only when the mood struck me, in other words RARELY. This time I'm trying something different.
I'm trying to blog for 30 days straight, meaning that I'm writing and publishing posts every day. I mentioned in my Bookending Spring Event Intro post that I have most of these blog posts already planned out and mostly written, if not the finished post that you're reading, then a rough outline. I'm finding that this method works for me, because I can get all of my ideas on the paper so to speak, and I can stop worrying about having to come up with something to write about on the go. As the days progress I can do the final touches and hit publish and feel accomplished.
Usually the final touches means putting in the graphics, maybe do the hyperlinks and format the style, which most of the time means about...20 minutes per post if I'm lucky, if not about 30 minutes. This is the method I've found that keeps me writing, which is my main goal to be honest, but also it helps me feel motivated. I've found that what works for most people doesn't work for me. I'm one of those people that need routine and consistency in order for an activity to become second nature. No matter how many times I do something, if I slack off even for a day, the chances of me picking up where I left off the next day are slim, and the more the days go by, the slimmer they get. So if I allow my blogging slump to win and to stop me from writing, chances are I won't be writing unless absolutely necessary for a long period of time, and I don't want that.
So what I'm doing currently is I'm giving myself a timetable. So take this week. I'm working in the morning, so that frees up my time in the afternoon, and I pick a time, usually around 2pm until about 3 pm, and I write whatever comes to mind, from tags and discussion posts, to reviews. I don't focus on making it pretty, I just put in the title so I know what the draft is about, and I write. If it's a review, I don't worry about putting in all the book info I usually include in my reviews, but I just write that review, maybe set up some labels, and move on to the next post. Then I let it stay in drafts until the next day, when I start the formatting process. I've actually been more productive this way, instead of focusing on both content and style on the same day for one post.
I really found a groove with this method, and for the foreseeable future I'm going to continue with it.
What is your preferred method of blogging?
