Hi! I miss you…

by | Oct 14, 2019 | Writing Life

It’s been a minute, yeah?

More like thousands of minutes.

It’s hard to write bogs or social media posts and think or believe or whatever that no one is reading them. Hell, it’s hard to write books and think or believe or whatever that no one will buy them, but that’s a discussion for another day.

However, I miss blogging. I loved it. It was writing and I loved writing. Long winded writing most of the time, but sometimes, it was just snippets of happenings. It was my avenue to share things that I liked or thought or cared about. Even on the days I dreaded it. Even on the days I was like… Well, fuck. What do I write about? I loved it. I loved being part of a group blog and I loved blogging solo. Blogging was more than a sound bite or a clicky headline. Blogging to me was…love.

Now, I was never good with the keyword stacking and SEO and getting my blogs to rank on Google or Bing or Yahoo. I never really cared, either. All I cared about was it was my way to connect with the people who liked me and liked my books, who liked what I had to say at any given moment about any given subject. And I was thinking the other day about the epic giveaways I had on my birthday or at Christmas. KitchenAid mixers, Keurigs, cookbooks, fiction books, Kindles, etc… I loved it all. And I miss it. I really fucking miss it.

Blogging is going or has already gone the way of the dinosaurs. Unless one already has a really well established audience, blogging as an individual is no longer relevant. Bloggers and readers migrated over to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or some other platform. But I have to be honest here… I’ve spent my fair share of time on Facebook (hate it), Twitter (just so much drama and people telling other people what to think, do, read, write, etc…), Instagram (comparisonitis is really prevalent, but I do enjoy Instagram and spend way too much time there). There are others, too, that I honestly haven’t investigated because time, time, time…

I also got lost in what am I supposed to say on my Facebook profile vs my Facebook page vs my Facebook group vs my newsletter vs my blog vs my Twitter feed vs my Instagram feed vs my Instagram stories vs… See what I mean? I just don’t have that much content or brain space or… And so, I pretty much just… Yeah.

But back to this post… I miss blogging. I miss the writing and the talking to y’all whoever y’all happened to be at the time. One person or twenty. I miss y’all and I miss this platform because it’s mine. This platfom is all MINE. Even with all the social media pages and profiles and feeds and stories and whatnot, I always go to someone’s website. I always look at someone’s pages and blog posts because I want to know them, the them that gets watered down through the variety of social media posts. I read newsletters, too, but truth be told, I have more than 1000 unread emails piled up over the last year that are primarily newsletters. I don’t always read them when they come in. They get lost in the shuffle because some people send out newsletters every single freakin’ day. Some I’ve been subscribed to send out more than one a day and it’s like…OMFG STOP!

I think though, even if no one reads my blog posts, I’m going to start blogging again. Blogs, to me, are more intimate than social media, like a conversation or a letter among friends. I know they say newsletters are supposed to be like that, but honestly, I haven’t hit my newsletter stride yet, because reasons… I’ll come back to that one on another day, too.

If you read this, feel free to say hi. If you don’t read this, well, that’s your loss.

Until next time (probably tomorrow or one day later this week)

It’s The Small Things, Really

by | Jan 8, 2016 | Author Friday, writing

Happy Friday!

And now that I get my ass up every morning at 5:30 and take my son to school, I look forward to Friday. Every. Damn. Friday. Before that, days just ran together because working from home, home schooling, all things delivered to your door… But anyway, FRIDAY! I can sleep in tomorrow. Thought it rarely ever works that way, it is nice to dream.

So, this post. I’ve blogged every day now since last Friday. Twice yesterday. And one of my goals for 2016 was to take a page out of Delilah Devlin’s book and have something on my blog all the time. It might be a guest post, or me yammering away about nonsense, or posting information about book releases, etc… But to start utilizing my blog again. A lot.

I’m disenchanted with social media. I use it. A lot. But I use it way more than I use my blog and my website and really, I think, it should be the other way around. I may only have 3 people reading this blog or visiting my site right now, but at least I know those 3 people WANT to be here.

2016 is the year I’m going to turn that around and use my blog and website and newsletter more than I use social media. I haven’t figured out all the ins and outs yet. I haven’t figured out how to get more people here or there or to sign up, but it’s a process and I’ll figure out what works for me.

I don’t generally like social media because Oh My God, I can’t control all that drama and I really don’t want to be part of it. I want to keep up with the business and then do the business MY way. (cue Elvis on stage in Hawaii singing MY WAY. it’s his birthday, by the way… he’d have been 81).

Oh Look!

Now, that man… He did it all his own way.

And I think that’s what we need more of. People doing things their way and even though we’re in a business of creating, most of us doing get ahead by being different. Nope. Author A does one thing. Then, Author B. emulates exactly what Author A did, right down to the hook and cover of her book. Authors C, D, and E, follow suit, and what we now have is an alphabet size pool of books that all look the same, read the same, follow the same path, etc…

I don’t want to read the same book and I don’t want to write the same book. I don’t want mine to look like yours or yours look like mine. But different in this business seems to have gone the way of the dodo. If we’re not all doing the same thing, then whoever is doing it different is doing it wrong. And I call bullshit.

I have listened for too long all that. No. More. I’m going to go about this my way. That’s how I started and I’m not afraid anymore. I’m not scared to say what’s on my mind. I’m not cowed by the ‘but how’s that going to look?’. Who cares.

It’s the small things that mean something. It’s the small gestures that are remembered, not always the grand ones. It’s the personal touch. It’s the individuality. And that’s what I’m going with. That’s what I want 2016 to be and mean to me.

Have a great Friday evening, y’all…

~lissa

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