{"id":25730,"date":"2014-05-22T06:30:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T18:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=25730"},"modified":"2014-05-21T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T04:00:08","slug":"coming-up-the-4th-birthday-of-the-blog-time-for-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/05\/22\/coming-up-the-4th-birthday-of-the-blog-time-for-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming Up: the 4th Birthday of The Blog — & Time for Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

What it's "really" all about...<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes indeed, on 31 May 2014 I will have been blogging for four years. It feels like no time at all, but during that time I have blogged every day, missing only one — the day immediately following the February 22nd earthquake of 2011 when the absence of power meant no internet and therefore no post.<\/p>\n

So coming up on the fourth anniversary seems like a very good time for reflection and “where to from here.” So far, this is where my ponderings have taken me:<\/p>\n

I really enjoy the blog, not least the opportunity to focus it around my love of story, poetry, writing and people. But it does make its demands in terms of time and energy. Keeping it going every day—largely on my own although I nod respectfully to Rebecca Fisher with Big Worlds on Small Screens<\/a> and the ad hoc book reviewers<\/a>—when there are also contracted books to be written, has proven a considerable challenge at times.<\/p>\n

With regards to the book writing, I also posted on Monday that:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience has been that in order to bring the colour and depth of the story in your mind \u2014 which one hopes comprises the richness of the world, the nuances of the characters, and diversity and complexity of the plot \u2014 to the page you need to minimise interference with the \u2018signal.\u2019 Solitude, and\/or long periods of uninterrupted time, are both an important way of achieving that outcome. Why long periods? Because the uninterrupted signal also needs to be sustained.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Let's see more of this...<\/p><\/div>\n

I also observed that:<\/p>\n

“Online interaction, to me, is very much in the nature of hanging out in the midst of the coffee house or the market square, and although that can be stimulating, it is also by its very nature immediate, interactive, and short term in focus. The complete opposite, in fact, of the novel-writing process as described above.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

So it stands to reason, or so it seems to me, that immersion in the one will actively work against one\u2019s ability to deliver in the other.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The primary reason I became a writer was to write novels. I love writing novels. I would like, if at all possible, to write great novels. I would also like to write them just a little bit faster than has currently proven the case. To have a hope of achieving any or all of these goals,\u00a0 logic suggests that I need to prioritise writing novels over other activities, no matter how much they may (or may not) complement my writing.<\/p>\n

An obvious re-prioritisation is to redirect some of the time and energy currently being given to social media activities back into writing. I do not propose giving up the blogging, because I do enjoy it and interacting with readers. I definitely want to maintain the blog as a platform\u00a0 to continue posting news and discussing my love of books and writing. I also want to keep regular features such as\u00a0 The Tuesday Poem<\/a>, Rebecca Fisher’s Big Worlds On Small Screens<\/a>, and the A Geography Of\u00a0 Haarth<\/a> series going.<\/p>\n

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...and this<\/p><\/div>\n

So I propose cutting back from posting seven days a week to four, in the first instance. This will see posts on Monday and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, at least until the A Geography Of Haarth<\/a> series concludes. After that I will look at whether three days a week, i.e. Monday, Tuesday (the Tuesday Poem rules out Wednesday, which would otherwise be more logical) and Thursday might work, or whether I want to stick with the four days. And I may, dear followers, also observe the occasional holiday on the blog. We will see.<\/p>\n

I know I may lose some of you and I shall be very sorry to see you go, but I think\/hope this may result in more Helen Lowe books reaching the world more quickly — and I do hope you agree with me that that<\/em> is what all this is really<\/em> all about.<\/p>\n

I am, however, still open to your feedback and hearing what you think. I am also willing to change in response to what you have to say, i.e. this proposal is not yet fully decided upon. So as always, I welcome your comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes indeed, on 31 May 2014 I will have been blogging for four years. It feels like no time at all, but during that time I have blogged every day, missing only one — the day immediately following the February 22nd earthquake of 2011 when the absence of power meant no internet and therefore no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-what-im-doing","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25730"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25743,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions\/25743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}