Hello again, and thanks as always for reading my blog!  As I’ve been hinting lately, now that I’ve been at this for about a month, and I’ve gotten some great ideas from Blogging 101, and from reading other blogs and seeing their different structures, it’s time to announce some changes to my format here on Writing Dragons.

First off, I’ve come to realize that trying to create one major post per day is just not sustainable in the long term.  I need to have less stress when it comes to this blog, or I’m never going to get any real writing done on my book!  Fellow blogger 10nineteen talked about not-stressing in his daily writing prompt post about “key takeaways” the other day, which you can read here.

As I commented there (see, I’m still checking off things from my Blogging 101 To Do list!)…

Great advice, not to stress about your blog and make it fun! As a brand-new blogger, I did the exact thing you advise against — I started January 1, and said I was going to make one post per day. You are not kidding about that causing stress! I haven’t missed a day yet, but I’ve got some pretty thin posts that have gone up at about 11:55pm… -_-;

After having done the Blogging 101 course, and beginning to figure out more what the focus of my blog (writingdragonsblog.com) is going to be, I’ve decided that I’m going to stick out the month of January with one post a day, but then come February, I’m changing things up a little and at least taking the weekends off, unless something strikes my fancy and I get the urge to write about it naturally, like you suggest.

Having thought about it a little more in the meantime, it’s not exactly true that I’m taking the weekends off completely, but as you’ll see from this schedule, I’m lightening my load just a little bit:

Sunday:
Daily Dragon

Monday:
Writing Prompt Post

Tuesday:
Daily Dragon

Wednesday:
Writing Craft & Wisdom

Thursday:
Daily Dragon

Every Other Friday:
WIP update, plans for the week, and general musings

Alternate Fridays:
Random Writings

Saturday:
Daily Dragon

So, to explain these in more detail:

The Daily Dragon posts will usually be something simple, a piece of artwork or a book featuring dragons I’ve come across in my internet-surfing.  I may have something to say about it in more detail, but it may just be a quick note for you to enjoy.  Having little posts like these scattered through the week will give me time to actually focus on writing my book!

On Mondays, I’ll be tracking down a Writing Prompt and publishing a long-form post, either from WordPress’s Daily Post, or from one of the Community Events or challenges, or sometimes from elsewhere, whatever strikes my fancy that day.  For now, the plan is to always write something that relates to Finding Dragons rather than a random musing, but we’ll see how it shakes out after I’ve done a few of them.

Wednesdays will be dedicated to sharing a fun writing meme or a discussion about Writing Craft, and may be a short or long post, depending on my mood and how the book is coming along.  (This whole post here is an example of a long post about my writing craft — which is why I saved it until today!)

Fridays will be alternating between one of two kinds of posts.  On the Fridays when I don’t have a chapter “due” by my own calendar (and I’m fudging a bit and giving myself an extra week now so I can finish chapter 4), my plan is to post something else I’ve written, whether it’s about Finding Dragons or about something else completely.  I am a writer of various things, after all, and I didn’t start out my writing adventure determined to write a novel series.  It might be a short story or poem completely unconnected to Finding Dragons (I also write about my fur-kids a lot), or it might be an interesting excerpt from a report I’ve written detailing some aspect of history or culture that I’ve used for inspiration in my worldbuilding, or it may be something else completely.  My article about Marc Gunn, the Celtfather, would be the first example.

This idea arose because lately I’ve been digging around and consolidating in one place all of the various folders labeled “Writing Stuff” that have I have hidden away on old laptops or on backup hard drives, and I’ve come across a few things I feel like sharing with the world.  This Friday, I’ll be posting a short story I wrote from the perspective of one of my fur-kids, titled “Forever Home,” that I hope you’ll enjoy.  Please feel free to leave any feedback if you feel so inclined; while these are “finished” pieces, I know they can always use some more polishing up.  (In fact, I love comments of any kind, so feel free to comment away on anything I post!)

Next Friday, when my chapter is “due,” you’ll get a work-in-progress update to let you know (and keep me accountable for!) how the plan — to write one chapter every two weeks, so I can finish the first draft of my novel this year — is coming along.  I’ll also write about my plans for the two weeks of writing ahead of me, and I’ll probably throw in some general life musings here as well.

So there you have it, my grand plan for going forward with this blogging adventure.  I’m really glad I started blogging in the first place, and now I feel like I have a great roadmap to make this interesting for myself, and for everyone who’s been so kind to read my ramblings.

Since it’s Wednesday, that means it’s “Writing Craft & Wisdom” day, so I’ll leave you with a quote from Junot Diaz about writers.  As always, thanks for reading, and stay creative!

Image credits:
Black and purple baby bookwyrm, by How Many Dragons?
A writer is a writer…