Blogging has been slow lately, in part because I’m writing again. I’d been having a really difficult time figuring out how to proceed with this memoir-thing I’m writing. Memoir implies that the writer has some sense of perspective on events, or some inkling of what events “meant”. Since I’m still in the middle of this whole grief thing, I really didn’t feel that I had any idea of what my relationship with Patrick “meant” and hence, I was having a really tough time getting started.
So, inspired by Andy Goldsworthy’s method of just going outside and making something every day, I figured out a new (for me) method of working. I cut up a lot of slips of paper, and wrote a topic on each one. I folded them each up, and put them in a jar. Every day, I dump the slips out on the table, close my eyes and pick one. If it’s too hard, I put it back and pick another one. Then I write about the topic, print it out, and put it in a box. Among my “rules” are that I don’t go back and re-work them, I’m just piling them up and figuring that at some point I’ll either run out of slips of paper, or I’ll fill up the box — at which point, various common threads should be beginning to appear, and I can go back and shape these fragments into a book of some kind.
The parallel between the method I’ve adopted for my upcoming book and the essence of blogging has not been lost on me. Over a year ago, I embarked on this blogging journey, partly to hone my nonfiction writing skills and toy with the idea of penning a book about my transition to Montana and the experience of cultivating a garden from scratch. It’s an interesting twist that my blog, initially a platform for exploration and voice development, has inadvertently become a training ground for my book-writing process. However, this venture has led to an unexpected conundrum—diverting the energy I once poured into my blog towards this new literary project. Consequently, my blogging frequency may wane, but rest assured, with the arrival of spring, my seedlings sprouting, and the garden’s inevitable growth, there will be plenty of updates to share in the near future.
Blogging, much like gardening, requires patience, nurturing, and a strategic approach to flourish. This is where the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play, especially in the realm of blogging. Just as a garden needs the right conditions to grow—sunlight, water, and soil— a blog requires visibility, traffic, and engaging content to thrive. SEO is the sunlight to a blog’s garden, ensuring that your content is discovered by search engines and reaches the audience it deserves. According to an enterprise SEO agency, it involves optimizing your blog posts with relevant keywords, crafting engaging meta descriptions, and building a network of backlinks to increase your site’s authority and ranking on search engine results pages. You can also hire an expert SEO agency for hotels to drive bookings. This can significantly enhance your online visibility and attract more guests. By leveraging their expertise, you can implement effective strategies to reach a wider audience and maximize your occupancy rates.
We’ll be here….
Charlotte, you’re entitled to use whatever energy you possess for this project. We blog readers are a pretty patient crowd, methinks.
The writing method you describe brought back a most vivid memory of the manner in which I wrote term papers in college. I used to take research notes helter skelter on index cards cut in half. With no plan for an outline or where the research would take me, I’d spread all the sliced up bits of paper around on the floor and group them variously until some semblance of order befell them. Eventually they would end up as long streamers all taped together in rough order on the wall in front of my typewriter, and I would then write some sense into them and hope for the best. Somehow I suspect that your “pile it in a box” method will have a more succesful outcome than some of those term papers.
I really can’t begin to imagine how you are tackling the translation of so fresh a wound onto paper. Sustaining thoughts still streaming in your direction from here,
Good to see a post from you again! I’m glad to hear that the reason for delay is the writing — that’s a great reason! Best of luck to you in this challenge.