500th Post

Blog Post No. 500

This is it. What everything (ever in the universe from the big bang to the moon landing) has been building towards. It’s the long anticipated 500th post on this blog. Before I get too deep into what is likely going to be a long and esoteric post, I want to thank Justin Cantelo, Brittni Brinn, and Christian Laforet for indulging me in writing thought-provoking (and far too kind) posts over the last three weeks. With little to no hesitation, they all agreed to help me and that’s a really good indication of friendship. They may be sick of me by now, but if they are reading this, thanks for your great guest posts!

I wasn’t paying attention when I hit 400 posts early in the pandemic. I missed the chance to do anything special, but I’ve had 100 weeks to think of something for 500 posts. Still, I struggled to come up with anything suitably epic. Christian made a good suggestion to have a retrospective. So, I’m going to do that. Not because he suggested it, but because I didn’t think of anything better.

I started this blog on August 23rd 2010. I was home from a year away at school, just getting back into the swing of things. I worked at Chapters at the mall and told myself that writing a blog was a good first step to writing books. Also, I was sick at the time, but I had no idea how badly. Later that year I would be diagnosed and with the help of medication, be kept alive all this time.

I point out my health since it’s something I can blame for the sporadic nature of the early blog. While I count those posts towards my total, I really separate my blog into two sections. The early stuff (the random posts once or twice a month with no real focus and a big break of time) and the restart in January of 2013 where I made my first real weekly post that has led to the post you’re reading now.

The restart coincided with the beginning of Adventure Worlds and (as it turns out) was very helpful in my growth as a writer. Actually learning how to get a weekly post done, staying consistent for years, and joining up with other writers has all come out of doing this blog (and Adventure Worlds Press). It’s been immensely beneficial. I don’t want to say that writing a blog is the only way to be a writer. That’s absurd. Actually, at times, focusing more on getting a weekly post done rather than writing or editing a story has been (minimally) detrimental.

It really all comes down to time management and effort (or maybe focus?). All in all, I usually spend less than an hour a week on this blog. Sometimes it’s more (like this week) but even when the day job is weighing me down, the time I put into this blog doesn’t really impede my writing (or editing).

Beyond starting this blog to help me develop my writing, I wanted it to be a way to help build an audience. Now, it also serves as the home base for my books, social media, and other projects. While I’ve gained a bit of a regular readership, I haven’t put a lot of effort into growing the views or readers. I try to make sure my views don’t plummet (though I’m not doing amazingly well in that department this year, especially since last year was so good).

Christian, who is really starting to take off with his new novel, has reminded me of the importance of social media in the publishing world. He had many publishers ask him for his follower number outright when they were considering publishing his stuff. This little blog won’t amount to much in that sphere, but hopefully, when I do break down and put more effort into social media, it will be a helpful launch pad (or landing pad or something).

When it comes to the future of this blog, I don’t really have a ton of plans. I’m going to keep writing weekly posts (partly because I want to and partly because it’s a habit). For a while, I would occasionally mention cutting down to every other week, but I think I’d only do that if I found myself far too busy with writing other things. I would certainly cut down the frequency of post before stopping all together.

Maybe one day the focus of this website will be more on the books and less on these posts, but that would be for an agent or other expert to decide. In the mean time, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and reach for 1000 posts. Thanks to everyone who comes and visits when you can. Thanks for the likes and comments. Some of the blogs I follow have way more views, but I like doing this and it’s a lot easier when there is a community taking part, no matter the size.

Writing is a two party process. A book or story (or blog post) is incomplete until someone reads it. So, thanks for making this complete.

As a small update. The Invasion Novel that I’ve been working on for many years now is finally at the stage where someone is reading it. It still has a long way to go even before I try to shop it around (which will take a long time itself). At least there’s some progress to report, though. Now this post is officially way too long, so I’m going to stop writing it for the week. See you next week for more regularly scheduled posts.