Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
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It’s been something like six weeks since the last Wednesday post I’ve had. I hate it when things happen that require me to let the blog languish, but I do what I have to do to manage and survive, no matter how much it hurts.
In the last few weeks, I have written and published my Christmas novella and finished Darcy’s Predicament. You may remember that a bakery opened in my town and that I have begun going there four days a week. I’m generally taking up space at one of their tables for three to four hours a day and have been getting word counts of 2,500 to 3,000 each day. I bought a new Bluetooth headset (Amazon affiliate link) and downloaded an app to my phone that plays “white noise” to help me drown out the sounds of the shoppers and stuff.
I plan to write the rest of Race Book 4 next, and I hope to finish it this month, during NaNoWriMo. I’m actually pretty confident in my ability at this point, especially since this month, I’ll be writing every day. Sundays and Mondays, I won’t write as much, but the rest of the week, I can pound out the words.
Of course, now that I’m getting back on track, I can revamp the blog. As I stated before, I’m going to change Monday and Wednesday posts, at least.
Whoa … let me back up a minute.
I had thought I had done a blog post about the changes I was planning to the blog, but I didn’t. LOL I only talked about the static welcome page. Well, let me fill you in.
I have been blogging three to five days a week for a year or two now. I enjoy it, but it does take a significant amount of time. I don’t get a lot of visitors and don’t have many followers. My friend Leenie gets both, so I looked at what she was doing.
Every blog post Leenie makes is tied into one of her books, either a blog story or an already-published book. She links back to her site all the time, and she keeps up with adding books to the pages where she lists them.
I have come to realize recently just how far from maintaining my site I have fallen. I have not added a book in a year, which means, if you click on “Zoe’s Books” in the header, you’re not going to find four or five books. Oops. *blush*
But back to the blog … I have looked at what gets viewed on my site and what doesn’t. Other than my Thursday and Friday story posts, I have few views. I looked at Leenie’s blog again. Remember when I said that every post she makes points to a story? That’s what I need to do, at least partly. That being said, the first change I’m going to make is to Mondays.
Currently, I have a Mondays with Austen feature. I have been adding my old Austen Authors posts to it, and am nearly caught up. After I had done so, I was going to share Austen-related things like research and stuff. The problem is, there are dozens of Austen-related websites already out there, and I have nothing new to add. Plus, looking all that up and rewriting it takes a lot of time, and that’s something I’m short on.
So, what I plan to do beginning next February is to write up a race recap, post it on Mondays, and link it to my Friday’s Race to the Weekend post for the week and/or one or more race books on the Zoe’s Books page. I’ll still share one week of Austen Authors posts each month, though, because I’d like to keep a copy of those on property I own, so to speak. LOL
So, that takes care of Monday. Next is Tuesday, which has been inspirational posts for a couple years. My goal with that was, in part, to collect enough memes to start sharing them on Twitter via Buffer for a year without reusing any. However, I pretty much dropped Twitter two years ago and cancelled my Buffer subscription earlier this year. All the major social media sites are either owned by Facebook or have begun to share FB’s aversion to third party posting apps, so it was kind of a waste of money.
I did choose verses and sayings to make into memes based on what I needed to be reminded of at that particular point, so they have a personal meaning to me. I have been told by a couple readers and blog followers that they enjoy my Inspirational Tuesday posts. I think I will keep them for the time being.
Now we come to these Wednesday Writer’s Journal posts. I enjoy these, I really do. Sometimes, I run out of topics, though, and end up scrambling for something to write about. I’m considering … well, I’m almost positive I am going to … give these up.
What will I replace them with? Well … *sigh*. I was encouraged to make the blog reflect me. Part of me and one of the ways people remember me is my love of the color purple. So, I thought I would make Wednesdays be days I could share purple things.
As I write this, insecurity sets in. I’m not really sure what to do. Purple certainly does not point to a book, which is a big part of the point of the blog. So, do I really want to go there, even though it’s part of me and my brand? I just don’t know.
I guess I have more thinking to do about this. Anyone want to share an opinion?
It could point to a book. For example lilacs and Lavender focuses on the purple flowers, You could share some of your favorite excepts from that book. When ODG gives him the flower from her hair ect. I can’t think of any from your other books but I’m sure you could find some no matter how loosely connected to purple. Love your new ideas. I am a follower of both you and Leenie and will enjoy seeing more of your books incorporated into your site.
Thanks for the great ideas, Lisa! <3