25 Secrets of the blog

How to deal with those times when you don't want to write anything on your blog and you have lots of ideas for drafts. It's something every blogger has experienced. I had some questions about this from another blogger. It looks like there are regular posts on this blog and you might get the feeling that I'm writing every day. Wrong, that's what I want you to think, but that's not what I do. I'm like everyone else, I have some work to do at home, some free time, some shopping, etc... I sleep for several hours at night. But one of my hobbies is writing, and sometimes I find the time to do it.

I am using a directory with many designs and models for future posts. The numbers on this new blog help me to keep them in order. I use Zettlr to see this and I know which file was written at a certain date, how many words are in it, has it been corrected, reread, etc... For example, this post was a draft for 3 weeks and I got an email about it. I knew I didn't have time to write it at that moment. I had written some posts about it in the past on the French blog, but some thoughts had evolved. When I was using Wordpress, I could do drafts directly in the "software". Now it's just a markdown file or a text file. I'll write down a few main ideas and add new ones a few days later. Sometimes there is a structure with chapter titles or parts. It depends on how complex the topic is going to be. And sometimes I'll break everything up, rearrange parts and words. Or I think the draft was a bad idea.

I don't write many reviews here, but I still do in the French part. Sometimes I write them immediately, sometimes it's a few days later because I have to think about it, understand something or look for some information. And I always find the right moment to do it. It's a kind of luxury for me to have time... I've seen some of my fellow bloggers lose that time because they've become fathers or mothers and it changes their lives. You have less time and you have lost the will to write about ... your life because it might be too personal. There are a lot of good reasons to stop writing. If you don't feel the need to do it, maybe it's the right thing to do... I write for myself first, and I know that if I'm forced to write something, it won't be good. That's one of the reasons why I stopped writing for a webzine. It was no longer for me, and after the challenge there was nothing interesting for me.

I know that sometimes I write too much, or I'm testing out new ideas for a while. Last year, at the beginning of this English version, I wrote reviews. It was not very good and not the idea I had in mind when I started this new blog. I was testing, looking for ideas, but as the subtitle says, it's "back to the roots of blogging..." a weblog, a journal, something I write for myself to document the life around me, how I see the world, my feelings, but nothing too personal....I'm not very good at that. So if there's a passion that makes you write only 10 posts, that's good, but if you run out of ideas after that, what's the point? That's life, and you've been very kind to share that. In the past, I've written one kind of post for a year, another for 3 months and then changed. Maybe I'm eclectic, but I'm aware that not everything is good. For example, I've started to reread and correct all the posts on the French blog...1500, I've got months to do it. The first posts and reviews were not very good. Sometimes it's a shame... But I keep them, sometimes with some changes. That was part of me, my evolution. I remember some poems in my teenage years that I was very proud of. One was in the local newspaper, but now I don't think it's good.

With all these drafts and posts, all I have to do is decide what to publish and when. It's also a luxury to always have something for next week. If there is nothing? It doesn't matter... It's just a blog, it's not my life, it's not my job to make money to live on... I don't know what it's going to be like when I retire, when I'm an old man, maybe alone, maybe not. It makes me curious about the future, and when I read everything I've written since 2005, I really can't guess what it will be. I'm only living and writing in the present, but you're reading it ... in some kind of future. That's my law of relativity, ha ha.

2Dɛ

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