Clearing up the Clutter

I spent a lot of time writing daily posts about random things when this blog started. I have posted some neat art, funny comics, political commentary, NaNoWriMo information, and the occasional writing post related to writing/my projects. I ran full tilt for a while last year, blogging an average of something like 1.3 posts a day between June and December.  Daily posts, NaNo info, and my NaNo journal make up the bulk of my posts. 

When my computer decided to crash back in January, it came about just as I started a new job. Prior to that, I was unemployed so I had all the time in the world to blog, research, write, and generally waste time on the internet. Since then, I have posted a little over 60 posts as a result. Not great. I’m averaging less than 1 per day, and that is only because I have random spurts of 2-3 posts in a day. I decided to dig deep and find out the real reason why I am not posting as much now compared to last year. The reason is this: I would rather be writing. Yes, blogging is writing, but it isn’t the kind of writing I would like to do, so I haven't been as good about it lately. My entire blog is a mashup of various ideas with no cohesiveness or clarity of thought. If you came to this page today and browsed the blog posts on the left, I highly doubt you would know that this is a blog for a writer trying to build a platform. It is exactly as the sub-title describes: random.

I am going to try to make an effort to clean that up a little bit by focusing on more writing and less random. This is just a trial like everything else so we’ll see how it goes. So what am I going to blog about? No, I’m not going to blather on about “buy my book” over and over again. I am still abjectly against that. But I am going to blog about my life as a writer. I just posted a blog about Twitter hashtags and have decided to streamline my posts into similar categories. Check it out:

Blogs about writing

• word count- This will be mostly for NaNoWriMo (which is coming up so freaking soon), as I don’t watch my word count any other time, except when editing my WIP.
• writing goals- This will be my goals for a set time, be it “NaNo goals” or “weekly goals” I have yet to decide.
• WIP- This will be posts about my current work in progress. Right now, that is Immo2.
• character chaos- This will be about the shenanigans my characters get into, refusing to follow the story as I had hoped and doing their own thing. It is a real problem.

Blogs about researching

• currently reading- This will be about the things I am currently reading. This will include novels of course. But it will also include articles and books on the topic of writing. Expect cross posting with other categories.
• WIP research- This will be about content I am researching specifically for what I am currently writing. It will include books, articles, polls, etc. If you have expertise in an area that I post about, please share your knowledge!
• writing topics- This will be a blog dump for things that I think would make awesome story ideas… just not necessarily for me. At least not at this time.

Blogs about editing

• housekeeping- This will be about grammar rules that I struggle to avoid, break regularly with/without my knowledge, ignore purposely, and basically trip over as I make my way through drafting. Also included will be spelling and word usage. Expect complaining on my part.

Blogs about revising

• killing your darlings- This will be about the pain of killing/maiming characters, scenes, and chapters in an effort to polish and hone my manuscripts.
• continuity and voice- This will be about issues with continuity and voice within my stories, how I try to find and fix them, and how it works out for me in the end. It isn’t always pretty.

Blogs deemed off topic and need no explanation

• politics, funny, family, work, animals, coffee, crafting, other

So, as you can see, my random no-filter posts will still be present, just in much less numbers. The majority of my posts will likely be a sampling of articles of interest, commentary on my writing process, and as it is quickly approaching: NaNoWriMo preparation. I will not post a daily NaNo prep as that would be redundant. But the journal will be back. Stay tuned. Coming up is a consolidated list of the writing posts I have made to date.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS