Insights Of A Novelist After 90 Days Of Blogging
I have been writing regularly and a lot for years. But so far, it’s always been novels. Blogging is still relatively new for me, and that’s why I’m still learning every day.
Most medium stories, in which authors report how they wrote for the first time daily over a period of time X, are from beginners.
I am also a beginner, but not in terms of writing. I am, after one year, still a beginner on Medium. I am just beginning to establish myself as a writer of daily articles.
So for me, it is not new to write daily. Daily publishing, on the other hand, is totally new to me. I’ve been writing articles on Medium for about a year, but I have only been doing it daily since March.
So this article is not so much about what I have learned from daily writing but about what daily publishing has taught me.
The ideas are gradually coming faster.
It was still a daily struggle to come up with new and good ideas for articles for the first two and a half months. I didn’t want to publish for the sake of publishing, but to offer my readers articles that were worth reading.
Recipes, film reviews, collections of quotations, and similar things were out of the question right from the start. You write such things when you don’t really have anything to say. That’s perfectly legitimate if you just want to stay in the flow of writing, but for me it was not an option.
They say that the ability to develop ideas is like a muscle. The more you train it, the easier it becomes to develop new ideas.
The first realization after 90 articles in 90 days is: That’s true.
In the meantime, I manage to produce up to three story ideas a day, which I think are worth becoming articles. The idea production is still exhausting, but it is getting noticeably easier.
I was surprised that it took two and a half months before this effect was noticeable. It is often claimed that a new habit becomes second nature after 21 to 30 days. In reality it can obviously take much longer.
The view of the world is changing
Even as a novelist, you see the world through the eyes of the storyteller. Everything that happens around you is at least unconsciously examined to see if it can be used for a story.
But when you write articles, this view intensifies considerably. You no longer just look for bits and pieces that you could use in one of your stories, such as certain behaviour patterns of other people or small anecdotes that you could use. As an article writer, you look for big Themes that are hidden in everyday life.
Looking at a wastebasket triggers thoughts about recycling, preparing dinner makes you think about nutrition and local food production, and your own tiredness in the morning suddenly gives rise to an article about sleep hygiene.
Whenever we change our focus on the world, the reality in which we live also changes. As a writer, I have long had a different view of the world than most people, but as an article writer it has changed a lot again.
The contact to the community of authors has become more intensive
In my case this is mainly due to the fact that I have been writing for Illumination since mid-March.
This publication, founded in March, now has over 10,000 followers and over 1100 authors. The authors communicate with each other in a slack channel, which should be unique for a medium publication. A lively communication takes place in this channel.
Meanwhile, I also work as an editor for Illumination, which allows me to see the latest submitted articles every day, even before they go online. Sometimes I can help by pointing out things that need to be improved before the article can go online.
But publishing my articles also leads to increased interaction with fellow authors. On Medium, authors are also readers, and so it often happens that other authors comment on my articles.
These comments can then lead to fruitful conversations. In this way, I make valuable contacts in the community. Of course I also comment the work of other authors.
Statistics are capricious
Writing an article every day for 90 days has less effect on the reads and views than you might think at first. I’m not saying it has no impact at all, because that would be a lie. My numbers have of course increased, no question.
The thing is, you should never judge statistics by individual days. An incredibly good day says as little about the next day as an incredibly bad one.
In May, for example, my best and my worst day were only six days apart. On 26 May I had 756 views and six days later only 161.
The first half of the month I had very low numbers, but in the second half of the month the numbers suddenly exploded for a few days, only to fall back to the level of the previous month.
There are no discernible patterns for particularly good or bad days of the week, and the only way to read a trend from the statistics is to look at longer periods of time.
It is therefore pointless to make the article theme for today dependent on what worked particularly well or badly yesterday.
Conclusion
After 90 days, I learned above all that ninety days is not much. There was just enough time to make the daily writing of articles a little easier than it was in the beginning. Also my views and reads have increased only moderately, but they have increased.
When you look ninety days into the future, it seems like a long time, but in retrospect, it’s as if you only started yesterday.
From the last three months, I can see that my development from novelist to article writer is well on its way. My respect for my colleagues who have been blogging regularly for years has grown enormously during this time.
Writing books and blogging is much more different than I once thought.
While I concentrate on one story for several weeks when writing a book, I have to come up with new ideas and topics every day when blogging.
I think it will be good for my books that I now work in this new discipline within the sport of writing.
René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.
Do you want more of this?
Receive weekly emails, and don’t miss any of my articles.
subscribe here http://bit.ly/ReneJunge
Read also: