A Guide to Blogging

Welcome, back to the unconventional blogging months for Histories and Mysteries. November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. In NaNoWriMo, writers everywhere attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. In October and even September, the planning process begins. As any writer knows, planning is one of the most important writing steps. Trust me; don’t try writing a novel without planning. It takes a lot of dedication and time, but if the result is a finished novel then all one needs to do is edit in the follow-up month of January. This is so because most authors recommend taking a break from the first draft for at least a month to six weeks. Most writers began their novel and finish it throughout the next year which is okay too because NaNoWriMo is more about dedicated writing than writing speed. If you miss NaNo in November, Camp NaNoWriMo is also available in April and July. Check out the website for this challenge!

Personally, during this month, I will be trying to finish up my first novel which is causing me much pain because I didn’t plan for it sufficiently. I call it my negative rough draft for this reason. But I’ll talk more about my novels at a later time. Comment below if you are doing NaNoWriMo.

This article is about the blogging process I follow, and some steps to start your own blog if you were considering that. Here’s a special look into the life of a blogger!

Step 1: Know What You Are Writing About

I began blogging in April 2017 because I wanted to have a blog like my friends did. They write at TAJ Blog and Anna’s Family Blog. I thought about what I would like to write about. I needed an inexhaustible source of blogging material that I could write about. I didn’t want to write about my personal life too much because I was posting it online (although I read the blogs of the brave souls who do). I also couldn’t blog about books because I would run out of books to write about (I don’t buy or read a lot of books for various reasons). So, I chose history and geography. There is always new information about the secrets of the past. I could research my information online and from textbooks. I also love learning about anything related to those topics so it was a good choice for me.

Step 2: Create the Title and Design

I began work on my blog immediately. I started with the title. Because I love both mystery novels and history, I chose Histories and Mysteries as the title for my blog. You haven’t seen much of the “Mysteries” part on my blog yet, but it’s coming eventually. I wrote an About Me article to kick things off, and then I designed the blog. I went with brown and black as my theme colors. As you all know, I eventually changed the blog design to incorporate gray and white so I could tone down the brown to tan. I also added some features such as the Archives and Labels on the sidebar.

You also might want to plan some graphics for your blog. I didn't have graphics for my first year of blogging until I decided to put a header picture in front of each article. Some bloggers have graphics for paragraph breaks too and change their blog design for every season of the year. I don't have time to change my blog design that often because I spend most of my time writing long articles.

Step 3: Get Started

As I mentioned, I wrote an About Me post to introduce myself to the readers. I also established my schedule for posting. This is my schedule of history, geography, literature, and miscellaneous things. I wrote one or two articles in advance so I wouldn’t have to cram my writing the day before I needed to post. I was excited to have my own blog and began posting.

Step 4: Keep Going

It’s always easy when we began things. I didn’t know the dedication it took to continue posting articles and much less the dedication required to finish a novel. But dedication is good. We would never finish anything if we quit anything we got bored or tired of (ahem, school). To keep my blog running, I write an article in advance. Just one article at the end of the week is actually not too hard. It’s a little more difficult for me because I write articles about a thousand words long each time. It keeps me from becoming lazy and slapping a video on my blog instead (No offense to people who do that). But blogging isn’t just writing. Blogs need updating in designs sometimes and you may have to put work into that to keep your blog fresh and new. The key to blogging as well as many other things in life is to keep going. You can do it!

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Blogging is beneficial for me because I learn new historical facts when I blog. I actually research what I write for about thirty minutes for the historical articles and somewhat less for other articles. It also lets me share my passions with the world, and keeps me writing regularly which is kind of an advisable thing for writers. Blogging is fun, but also a lot of work. All of these factors go into writing a blog.

Here is a quote about what blogging is about. That was this week’s article. Come back next week for another article about blogs and writing.