CQ 21 – Please share a brief history of your blogging career
Kate also left some questions to consider:
What lead you to start?
Has your motivation changed since starting?
What has the experience been like?
Have you learnt anything?
Has your writing style changed?
What advice would you give to a new blogger?
And please don’t forget to mention some of the highlights along the way – such as the people you’ve met, things you’ve learnt …
My “blogging” career actually began in the late 90s (97 or 98) although it wasn’t called blogging back then. The term weblog had barely become a thing and wasn’t sophisticated like it is now. I taught myself html and began creating my own website hosted by Angelfire where I posted a journal and my poetry. Everything had to be manually updated. The first blogging site that I joined was LiveJournal. I think that was in 1999 or early 2000. I briefly joined Blogger in, I think, 2002, but I never really liked the format (still don’t). Around 2003, I joined WordPress when it first came out and have had various blogging accounts here over the past 13 years. The account I have now, I began back in 2006, I believe, but I didn’t get serious about it until 2011 when I began the blog A Whispered Wind. My themes for blogging have almost always been the same – journal writing and a place to post my fiction and poetry.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I have been using the internet for over 20 years and during all of those years, I’ve almost always kept some kind of account of my activities. An online friend had a user board back in the early 2000s and gave each of us our own “room” on the board to write whatever we wanted there. I used Yahoo group boards and my personal manually-updated website during my Pagan Lake days on Yahoo Chat (2000-2005). And once upon a time, Yahoo had a section of your profile where you could have a journal of sorts. That feature (and Yahoo groups) was how I kept up with my friends in an online vampire game from 2004 until around 2007 or 2008 (I think) when Yahoo took that feature away. We used it to post story arcs for our characters in the game. Now, I just post here on WordPress – journal entries, stories, and poems. It’s funny… the technology has changed over the years, but nothing much else has for me and why I blog.
My advice to new bloggers are as follows:
- Blog about what you are passionate about.
- Themes can definitely help you to hone down your passion into one or two things. (Even Randomness is a theme *winks*)
- Be consistent. Pick a few days a week to post or every day, if you are that ambitious.
- Read other bloggers’ blogs. Like and leave comments.
- Answer comments people leave on your posts.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned during all of these years of blogging is to have fun. Don’t stress about your blog or what you post. If you are building an audience, they will continue to return if you do those things above. When blogging stops being fun, it’s time to stop. Your audience will notice your lack of enthusiasm.
Happy blogging everyone!
As the Fates Would Have It 
It was interesting to read about your blogging journey. And you are right about making it fun.
This is wonderful! I’m not on the web line as much as I want to be. Lovely! Each computer I’ve had since 1984, had different programs, which were lost with the death of the computer, almost like a good friend. I actually hammer one computer in 1999, which took all my stories, and buried it in my backyard. Whatever happened even took the hard saving disc. Still have not written all of them back — took mu first novel, still working
something wrong with the comments — anyway, have words on the web help to saye them –> needed this earier in my writing.
Wow Lori you were there from the very beginning! I’m impressed as I started only last year. And you have always kept super busy by the sounds of it, hope your health is improving?
Yeah, I am a long-time computer geek. I’ve had loads of fun over the past 20 years or so. And yes, dear one.. my health has improved. Over the nasty pneumonia and the coughing, as of this morning, seems to have dissipated. Finally! lol Probably won’t have another bout until late Feb or early March.. just in time for Spring.
Interesting that your healing synchronised with the end of that fab story!? And also explains why you are such a talented writer, you’ve had decades of practice, I’m just starting and doubt I will ever reach your quality but I am enjoying my efforts.
Well my sickness began with it.. I was only two days into the story when I got a cold which turned into bronchitis and then pneumonia, although, I think it was pneumonia the entire time and never really bronchitis.
I’ve been writing in some manner since I was a kid.. mostly fairytales and myth stories then, but I did take creative writing courses in college too. You will do fine, Kate. With each new piece you write, your writing will improve. Just keep typing away at it 🙂 *hugs*
mmm that confirms my theory that your characters are all parts of you! You heal as you write and to heal effectively we often have to undergo another shorter sharper burst of health complications eg pneumonia? Stay well!
Ah, an interesting observation, Kate. Thank you. It is odd. I do tend to get ill during a major writing project and heal as I write. I never thought about that.
Maybe you are the master of creative writing and I maybe of people …?
Could be 🙂 but don’t sell yourself short. Writing takes practice.. lots of it and I am no where near a master of it yet. I am still learning as I go along.
Agreed and people are too complex but they have been my passion all this life!