What Has 7 Months Taught Me

It’s been seven months and change since the site redesign and the blog came front and center. I made a goal to post on every weekday unless I wasn’t around and that went pretty well. In that time I’ve made 165 posts or a little over 23 per month which is good considering I took a good number of days off.

Ideas

One of the things I’d suggest to anyone working on a blog is write down your ideas for posts as soon as you have them. I cannot tell you the number of times where I was busy, had an idea for a posts and thought “Yeah, that’ll be great! I won’t forget this one, it’s so cool!” aaand then I can’t remember it when I sit down to write.

Another thing that comes up is ideas that want to pop up while you’re writing a post. You start on one thought and by the middle, you recognize you’re drifting into another. In my opinion, the best thing to do with that is split them and make two posts out of them. If the new subject is burning through your brain, re-write the post on that subject.

Writing

One of the nice things about having an audience (no matter how small) is it’s a good motivator to keep writing. I know that not a lot of people read my posts that are specifically about The Artifact but when I want to write about it I’m going to without apologies, that’s what this blog is here for. It’s the regularity of the writing that builds up skill in writing and I think that has benefited me.

One of the most useful things I’ve learned is how to write in a stream of consciousness. A lot of times all I have is a vague idea for a post. I’ve learned to let that vague thought guide my writing until I have defined it with words. It’s like a block of wood that you can kind of see a face in, then you whittle it down and bring that impression more to the forefront.

Time

There is one downside to this blog. I have more time than I used to for writing, I even used that time to go and write a new RPG Steampunkfitters. Unfortunately that means I’m trying to write for two games and this blog. The Artifact has both benefited from it and suffered for it. On the one hand, the blog has attracted new readers and I get about ninety plus downloads a month where I used to get forty. On the other hand I’m not done with Tortuga and I have two more sourcebooks to finish before The Artifact’s story arc is done (well the first one anyway). I’m not complaining, I’ve got to work on a lot of ideas I’ve had and that’s really cool but now I need to get back to work.

Moving Forward

At the start, I wanted to post every day. I usually would try to post an article of at least 400 words but often ended up 600-1200. Now I’m going to set a new goal. I’m still going to spend the time that I have been on writing but a bulk of it is going to be on getting Sourcebooks done. I’m going to try and use what I’ve learned blogging and use it in writing for sourcebooks. I also need to get back into drawing because I’ve been slacking majorly.

So from here on in I’m going to set the goal for a general interest post on Friday. The rest of the time I’m going back to the word processor or GIMP to get things done around here. I might throw an update out once in a while that’s not on Friday, but it should be about the game and probably will end up being artwork (I hope). If on the off chance anyone wants to guest post or even join the team over here and claim a day that’s fine too.