Plans and Design Shifts

First, sorry I’ve been out of touch the last two days. Been kind of out of it, even not considering the brain power required by my class.

Speaking of which I am taking DMPC 105, or Intro to Digital Marketing. It’s not a topic I’m very familiar with, and if I ever intend to get more than the automated bots that currently scan my site, it’s something I’ll probably need to learn about that. Last week, I learned about the 4 P’s of marketing, which are Product, Price, Place, and Promote. Price isn’t an issue; the blog is free, and I’m not at a stage where I would set up Patreon or newsletters or anything like that. Place… is definitely an issue (probably the biggest one) but I’m also not there yet. Same with Promote. (We’re actually learning more about those two the next couple weeks, though.)

To my surprise, though, I realized I didn’t have a firm grasp on the “product” of this blog. What did I want people to get out of this? What would they gain from being here, and is there anything here that would interest my target audience? So I spent time thinking about it, and I came up with two general reasons why I, at least, might ever visit a site like this. the first, is to see the writing process in action. Honestly, that feels a bit weak; this isn’t, thus far, a writing blog like K.M. Weiland’s “Helping Writers Become Authors”; I am 100% an amateur, and don’t feel qualified to give advice. I can just show you what I’m doing, for you all to analyze to your hearts content. However it’s something that could be interesting if I leaned into it a little more, so I intend to follow every post with a secondary, “behind the scenes” look at my process. Every day, before I write, I spend 10-15 minutes planning out what I’m going to write, and sometimes letting my thoughts wander. This secondary post would be a verbatim transcription of that (minor typographical errors aside).

Second, I thought people could come here for the stories. With the way I have the blog set up currently, that… would be a challenge. It’s hard to find the major stories I’ve written, and harder to dive into them. So I intend to take time sometime over the next week to include new pages, and focus my writing more so I have discreet chapters or scenes posted regularly, in addition to my daily ramblings. I don’t want to set those on a schedule; life gets weird, and until I’m more firmly established, I can’t honestly promise I’ll stick to one.

Finally, in addition to all that, I decided that once every other week I would include an in-depth review of a story I enjoyed. It will probably be focused on books, but it won’t be limited to those. For example, I intend to do an article on Arcane season 1 at some point. That could be a way to generate new interest, at least once I get to the point where I’m actively promoting this.

As for a timeline… I’m not really sure yet. The bonus, behind-the-scenes post I intend to start immediately. The story-centric restructuring…will not be immediate. It could happen Friday or Saturday, but we’ll have to see how that goes. As for the review articles, I’d like to start that this week; I’d say it’s more likely than the restructuring, but no guarantees.

Updates and Future Plans

So, updates first. As you might have guessed, I've been dealing with an episode of depression or something similar most of this month. I'm finally back— something clicked for me this morning, and now I've got loads of energy— but that's why I haven't been posting.

On top of that, Sunday, while trying to set up zoom, my laptop fell and busted. I'll be able to make things work; the screen died, but the computer itself still works. But I can't afford a monitor until Friday, so it's going to be interesting the rest of this week. My brother said I can borrow his computer, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up on my updates here.

Now, for future plans: I want to take time to revise my Rapunzel story, so I'm going to shift this to every other day, except Sundays, which I will still be staying on here for. That will make it less of a to-do checklist and more for myself.

Apologies

As anyone who is currently checking this regularly may be able to tell, but I’ve been kind of out of it the last few days, and I have not posted on here as I should. Since Sunday, if I’m being honest, and even back to last Wednesday I wasn’t at 100%. It’s nothing physical; just a problem with some recurring mental issues and a lack of sleep, I think.

Still, I want to be consistent about posting everyday, and more importantly writing every day. I haven’t done any writing since Monday, and even that was half-baked. I can’t improve if I don’t work at it. So I’ve been thinking about what has caused this recent relapse, and ways I can avoid it in the future.

I think the reason it happened comes from two converging sources: first, I got distracted. I’ve been playing a few too many video games the past few weeks (specifically the Trails in the Sky and Dark Souls III). No matter how good they are or how amazing the storytelling, I still need to do what needs to be done. I have some plans to scale back on that, though.

Secondly, I completed one major goal and did not set a new one to keep that momentum rolling. Some of that’s intentional; Nanowrimo’s a bit too intense to do consistently all year. That’s why it National Novel Writing Month, after all. But taking it easier shouldn’t equate to slacking off, and so I want to set specific goals regarding the stories that have most caught my interest at the moment, like Hanako and the Orphan of Hamelin. Perhaps set aside time on the first of each month to plan out what I want to accomplish that month? That might be a good goal. I’m also going to give myself permission, if I have long brainstorming sessions, to count that as my daily writing. I’d been resisting the idea ever since I started the blog, since I’m hoping people will read this and I want to give them something worth reading, but if I need to sit down and think, I need to give myself permission to do that without stressing myself out.

That said, I’m not sure how I’m going to handle posts covering this week. I’ll keep posting what I’d written before, and things will even themselves back out eventually, but I may double post one day or write a couple extra scenes another to compensate. Anyway, thanks to anyone who’s been following the blog; it’s appreciated!