Hello Internet!
I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy. I also hope everyone is still focusing on their New Year’s Resolutions and haven’t given up on them yet. If you have come a bit short on those goals, don’t give up yet. There’s a lot of year left and there’s no reason to give up just two weeks into the new year. Anyway, I’ll probably have another Weekly Blog talking about my specific resolutions/goals for the year, but I want to take this Weekly Blog to talk about expectations with the Blog going into the new year.
However before I talk about that I want to quickly talk about a couple things I published at the end of the last year. At the end of 2021 I published a list of My Top Poems and My Top Writing Prompt Pieces for the year. If you are a new reader or just missed out on these lists, I highly recommend you check them out. I know that spending a lot of time on a website slogging through a backlog of content isn’t always fun, so this is a way to read older posts that you might have missed and it’s all in a convenient location. These lists highlight what I consider the best of the Poems and Writing Prompts I published last year, so if you’re just looking for the best stuff (or at least the best stuff in my opinion), definitely start there.
The other thing I want to talk about is all of you! At the end of last year I hit a major milestone when I published my 700th piece, Scarlet Door Part 3. At that time I was so close to hitting 800 Followers on WordPress and was hoping I’d hit that by the end of the year. And thanks to all of you wonderful people, the website surpassed 800 Followers. I really do appreciate all the people who Follow me here on WordPress and help me grow this community. I’ve always had the goal of growing a positive and creative community here on WordPress and all my readers new and old help me do that. All of the positivity and support I get from all of you really make my day/week/month/year. It’s also thanks to all of you, last year was one of my best years yet in terms of views. We hit over 10,000 views for the year and that’s like…wow. Just wow. Like I said, this amount of support really blows me away. It gets me excited to write and publish stuff and this time off has gotten me really excited for year six of doing this thing!
Oh also did I mention that I’ve been doing this for over five years. Like we just hit the 5th anniversary of Allen The Writer and now it’s time for year six!
I know I’ve talked about a lot but the main thing I want to talk about is what to expect from this new year. I’m officially back for the new year and I’ll be getting back into a weekly schedule. Now in the past I tried to publish a Weekly Blog every Sunday, Poem every Wednesday, and Writing Prompt Piece every Friday. On top of this I have published additional things on Saturdays. This would be an ideal schedule, but unfortunately it’s not sustainable. If you have been reading my stuff for awhile, you’ll know that I often miss my own deadlines. Now these are completely arbitrary and no one else is making me keep this schedule, but I still feel like I’m letting you all down when I miss the mark and don’t publish things on days I was originally going to publish. Missing these deadlines but trying to push myself to hit these dates leads to major burnout and I end up having to take breaks. It is a good system in theory but obviously it has some issues. So for 2022, I’m going to try to pull back on the number of things I will publish in a month. This should hopefully lead to an increase in quality for each piece I do publish while also keeping burnout to a minimum. I’ll definitely take breaks as needed, but hopefully I’ll need breaks less.
So what does this mean specifically for my schedule? Well I’m still going to stick to my Sunday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, but I’m not going to be publishing every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. There will be days where I don’t publish anything and those will be planned. Altogether I plan on publishing six to eight pieces a month. Now depending on how things go and how productive I am in the month, that number could go up or down, but generally I’m aiming for eight pieces a month. I really do feel like this will lead to better stuff being published while also keeping a balance between many other aspects of my life. I love writing and want to continue doing it, but I don’t want writing to interfere with other hobbies and take up all my time. Again, that’s the reason I got so burnt out and creatively drained. We’ll try out this new system and if it doesn’t work, I’ll edit as I go.
I know that not everyone likes these types of updates and peaks behind the curtain, but I think it’s important to communicate with all of you and be honest about what’s going on with me. I think it’s also good to set expectations for the year. I’m really looking forward to 2022 in terms of writing and publishing things and I hope you all are excited to read the stuff I write. I also hope that front loading this Weekly Blog with all the positive stuff helped cushion the blow of the boring update. At least that’s the hope. I will say that I’ve spent some time over my break writing some stuff and I’m excited for the stuff coming out this month. Good stuff is in the works!
If you enjoyed this Weekly Blog and are thrilled that I’m back from break, feel free to give this Weekly Blog a Like. Likes help me know what you all enjoy and what type of stuff I should write in the future. I also recommend that you leave a comment down below. I’d love to talk to all of you about your thoughts surrounding this new announcement. Are you excited? Disappointed? Let me know! Also if you are a new reader or just haven’t followed me yet, I highly recommend you Follow Me here on WordPress. That way you’ll know when I publish new pieces and they’ll show up in your readers feed. Like I said before, I’m slowly building a positive and creative community here on WordPress and I’d love to make the community even better. We hit 800 followers at the end of 2021 and I’d love to reach 1,000 Followers by the end of 2022. Your support and your follow can help me make that happen. Lastly, you can check out my Twitter. I Tweet everytime a new piece is published here on WordPress so you can be informed that way. Also I tend to retweet Pokemon and Legend of Zelda Fanart and talk about Critical Role. If that interests you, go ahead and Follow me there as well.
Thank you so much for all your support and I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
Header Photo Credit to Pexels.com
https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-red-typewriter-on-white-table-3695297/
Allen The Writer 