The unexpected blessings of blogging daily

I blogged about Emmie, my little writing buddy.

A week ago, I decided to blog daily. Well, technically speaking, I set a goal of blogging every week day, but so far, I have posted something every day, even on the weekends. I had been neglecting my website blog lately, and I wanted to provide content on my Facebook author page. Thus, I made this goal: to post on my blog, then copy that post onto my Facebook author page daily.

Days one to three weren’t too bad. I just wrote about some things that were happening in my life, somewhat tied into writing. My background was journalism before I went into novel-writing, so it’s been fun to go back to writing short non-fiction pieces again. I also like taking photos so I use some of them for what amounts to photo-essays. By day four, however, I felt like I was running out of material. Thankfully, by the end of each day, I could usually come up with "something interesting" or “something I learned.”

My titles, so far:

-Saying yes…by saying no

-Why I didn’t write today

-My little writing buddy

-Breaking writer’s block

-A great day

-How to sprint through a manuscript

-A minimalist approach to creating

Blogging daily has blessed my life, and I wholeheartedly recommend this to those of you who want to establish a platform and strengthen your writing chops. Here are some things I have learned:

1. It can be done.
2. Not everything has to be earth-shattering, but surprisingly, my days have been more interesting than I expected.
3. I became more observant so I could have material; I had more material because I was more observant.
4. Once you commit the time, it is easier to maintain a daily blog than a sporadic blog.
5. The daily habit of writing helped my other writing, too. It’s like priming the pump for my fiction.
6. My Facebook author page followers liked or responded to my non-writing posts just as much, if not more, as my writing-related posts.
7. On Facebook, I saw more engagement in terms of likes and people seeing my posts.
8. I’ve had people share some of my what-I-learned writing posts.
9. It’s fun to see what I can write. It’s like flash non-fiction.
10. Adding photos (mine or I get free ones from pixabay.com) makes the post more appealing.
11. Usually, I write in my journal (I type my entries on the computer), then use passages for my blog posts so I am not creating extra work.

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone reads my writing, or if a couple of likes is enough to justify spilling my guts out there for everyone to see. However, the way I see it, writing is transformative, not just for the reader, but for the writer. I’ll take the blessings how they come.