The Blogger Recognition Award

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy

Badge: Blogger Recognition Award

A big thank you to Bookneeders and Red String Paper Cuts, who have kindly nominated me for the Blogger Recognition Award! Click the links to see their awards (and good blogging advice!) and check out their blogs. I know I’ve been slow to respond, but I’ve been looking forward to accepting and passing on the award love.

Rules

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  • Write a post to show your award.
  • Give a brief story of how your blog started.
  • Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
  • Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
  • Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

The Story of My Blog:

I was working on a fantasy novel and ignoring suggestions from fellow writers and the general interwebs that I should blog, because I knew nothing about blogging and felt intimidated by the whole idea. Then a friend convinced me to try it out, saying it was a great way to regularly write and publish things and interact with other writers/bloggers/readers, instead of staying in the lonely ‘writing a novel’ bubble. I was still a bit uncertain, but I went to a workshop at my local writer’s centre that focused in part on blogging, got some good advice and ideas, and felt ready to give it a try.

Since I’d just finished a thesis that involved analysing fantasy books, I decided to do something similar for my blog (except in a less dry and academic way 🙂 ). It was, as my friend had promised, a really rewarding experience, and I’ve been doing it ever since!

Advice for New Bloggers:

  1. This is a piece of advice I got when I started blogging and it may sound obvious, but I found it helpful: blog about something that interests you long term and that you feel passionate about, and don’t expect to be ‘successful’ straight away. One of the main reasons blogs ‘fail’ is because the blogger loses interest or gives up too early. When I started I had lots of random ideas for things I could blog about, but I realised most of them were things I’d get sick of very quickly. Fantasy books have always been and will continue to be a passion for me so I knew I wasn’t going to get sick of blogging about them after a few weeks.
  2. This advice goes counter to most blogging advice I’ve heard but hey, I’m giving it anyway: you don’t have to blog every day or second day or a certain number of times a week. Sure, if your goal is to amass tonnes of posts/followers/traffic in a short space of time or you want to personally challenge yourself, go for it, but if you just want to have fun blogging and put something out there, and all you can manage is a post a week or a fortnight, that’s fine too. Doing something is better than doing nothing, or forcing yourself to do more than you can handle. I follow bloggers that post every day and others that just post occasionally. Frequency isn’t important as long as you’re enjoying yourself and meeting your own goals.

Nominations:

This time I’m breaking the rules and nominating just one person – my good friend Jenny over at Travel Adventure Discover. She writes great travel advice and posts with stunning photos from all over the world that either make me very jealous or very hungry! Luckily she’ll be travelling with me soon, so for once I’ll have no photo envy 🙂

22 thoughts on “The Blogger Recognition Award”

    • Yes it really is about goals – I’m sure very regular/frequent posting is great if you have a goal to grow your blog to a certain level within a certain time (or monetise it), or if you just like posting regularly, but if I forced myself to post every day or ‘X times a week’ I think I’d get sick of it and have no time for writing books and pursuing other goals that are equally important to me. I admire anyone who can manage very frequent/regular posting, but it’s just personally not for me!

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  2. Thanks so much for the nomination and for your kind words! I can’t wait to explore together and you can be sure there will be a post about it in the near future! Xox

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  4. I agree that we don’t need to feel like we should post daily. Blogging is personal and time-consuming, sometimes you just can’t squeeze time for it or you don’t have the inspiration. I’d rather not post for a week than post rushed things for the sake of it 🙂

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    • So true, I also would rather not post for a while than force myself to post something rushed when I’ve got no time or inspiration, just for the sake of having something posted. I feel like as long as I’m posting things I’m happy with, it doesn’t matter if there are longer waits between them 🙂

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    • Yes you have to do what makes you happy. I suppose if my blog was my main job, pursuit or income then my personal enjoyment would be less relevant – but seeing as it’s not, I feel more comfortable sticking with my once a week posting for the moment (or if I fall behind, a fortnight! Though I generally try not to do that… 🙂 )

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  7. Sound blogging advice. My blog has fallen by the wayside recently for the sake of busyness — but also lack of clarity about how I actually want to present it. I wrote in too many directions. 🙂 You picked a good one!

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    • Thanks! Yes it’s hard to pick a direction sometimes, but I’ve heard many good blogs start as one thing (or many things 🙂 ) and morph into another thing once they decide what they want to focus on, so even if you write in a variety of directions you can always narrow down or change if you want to. Anyway, I hope you’re able to find some clarity and overcome the busyness (busyness is slowing my blogging down at the moment too!).

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      • I keep justifying it by saying, “Hey, at least you’re working on your novel every day!” ….. but I could also be spending a lot less time on social media, you know? xD

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        • Haha yes so could I, social media can be a real time sink! Working on your novel every day is great though – as long as you’re doing that that’s the main thing, and if you manage to fit in blogging as well then that’s a bonus.

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