Pull the party poppers, toss the confetti, and toot a party blower! I have completed one year of weekly blogging!

When I started blogging last May, I made a goal to blog weekly for one year. That felt like a huge commitment, but I wanted to have content “out there” and, as every advice column will tell you, establishing a routine encourages regular readers. As I discovered over the course of the year, these conceptions about starting a blog were dubious—or at least not entirely productive for me. While I did find some regular readers (*waves*), overall I discovered that people were reading my blog in chunks, you know, the same way I tend to read blogs. So I decided that once I hit a year of blogging, I would revise my schedule and do something that feels more in line with my goals and with my personal habits.

I don’t regret starting my blog with a gangbusters approach because I learned a lot about blogging by doing it regularly:

1. I learned how to cultivate inspiration when I didn’t feel inspired.
2. I developed the ability to execute ideas on a deadline.
3. I learned to develop a plan and backlog, so I had something to fall back on when it was difficult to produce something spontaneously.
4. I learned that I don’t have to keep a weekly blog. (A very valuable lesson.)
5. I regained confidence in my ability to produce short work.

So, what does that mean for the blog going forward? First, I’ll be cutting back posting to every other week. The first post of every month will still include self-editing and revising advice in the form of DIY Edit. Other posts will relate to various topics concerning the writing life. I’m planning to use my extra time to do deeper dives into topics that require more research or more time to articulate. Over this past year I thought of several topics that simply were taking me too long to write while keeping to a weekly schedule. So cutting back will not only help me create time for other projects, it will help me develop some longer and more involved posts for this blog.

If you like what I have to say about writing and want to see additional posts each month, make sure to check out my Patreon. Some of the content there includes writer resources and sneak peeks at what I’m writing. Rewards start as low as $1 a month, and the upper tiers include one-on-one editorial consultations—pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading this past year! You helped keep me going. I hope you’ll find the posts with deeper dives valuable and are as excited about this change as I am.