The Pittsburgh Writer Blogtober 2022 is officially complete, and now I don’t know what I am going to do for the rest of the year. I feel as though I’ve used up all my ideas for the next two to three months in one fell swoop. Is that not kind of the point of Blogtober? Well, it’s more like a internet social experiment, in a way.
I was on the fence about participating this year because I know how my track record has been with online “competitions” before. National Novel Write Month? Nope. Not my thing. I’m sure there are others out there, but that’s the most common one next to Blogtober that I’ve seen.
Normally I’m a slow writer. I like taking my time, letting a scene stew for a while in my brain, and follow all that up with a little bit of research. I know the posts for this year’s blogging challenge were not my best work, but I did what I could. Especially considering the surgery I had this month right smack dab in the middle of it. So here are three things I’ve learned about my blogging style by participating in Blogtober 2022.
Plan, but be open to changing those plans. Now I have to take a moment to say I’m actually pretty proud of myself for completing this challenge. Not only that, but I completed it on the 16th, way ahead of schedule. It’s nice being able to say that I finished something for once in my life (I’m looking at you, unfinished works in progress! You’re next!)
Having a table like this to keep track of all the ideas was incredibly helpful. I may not have always known exactly what topics belonged to which dates, but it provided a great snapshot of topics, and helped me see titles.
I kind of liked having a few different titles to build from already, like my “All About” series and “A Brief History of…”. All I really had to do then was fill in the blank. The table to the left isn’t completed, as I am still working on the last two posts. Some titles have been tweaked as well. If you struggled with Blogtober this year, maybe implement something like this to keep all your ideas in one place.
Blog ahead, blog ahead, blog ahead. If your schedule allows (and your platform has this function), I would highly HIGHLY suggest blogging ahead. Especially if you have other events happening at the same time. Don’t worry about what other people are doing; find the “perfect storm” for yourself and stick with it. One can easily get lost in this trend. Blogging ahead not only provides opportunities for you to take a break, but there’s an added bonus of being able to interact with other creators and read their Blogtober contributions. This is what I will be doing the rest of the month.
Choose a time of day for your posts to always go live. You could take a look at your blog’s statistics, figure out the most popular times of day. For some reason 7:00 AM seems to work perfectly fine for a posting hour. It’s a number that’s just stuck in my brain for a very long time. So, as to not
