It’s Wednesday again. Specifically, it’s the first Wednesday of the month and this means it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG) to meet. Last month, I set myself a single goal for the month, which was to publish a blog post each day for the month of October. Originally, I planned to be participating in the 31-day writing challenge too, which is prompt-based, but I quickly gave up on that. I also didn’t set myself a goal of broadening my writing horizons in any specific way. I just wanted to hit that “Publish” button everyday for 31 days. And I didn’t reach that goal.
For this reason, I’m not sure how I feel about my writing over the past month. I mean, I know when I said in my September IWSG post that having published 21 posts in August made it an “okay” month, people responded that they felt this was a huge achievement. I know at one point I struggled to publish one blog post a week too. But I want to keep challenging myself. Then again, maybe I’ve reached my potential.
So, in keeping with yesterday’s post, I’m going to say this past month was good enough with respect to my writing. Not perfect – far from it. But it was good enough.
Now on to this month’s optional question. This month, the question is: what’s harder to do: coming up with your book title or writing the blurb? Now I must say I haven’t attempted to write books since my teens and had no idea authors had to come up with the blurb themselves. I’ve tried writing book blurbs and titles before even writing a single chapter – sort of like pitching a movie idea to Hollywood or whatever.
I honestly didn’t find coming up with titles particularly hard when I still wrote short stories or book manuscripts. That being said, my one published piece – yes, the one I got published in 2015 – is untitled. I also struggle sometimes with coming up with original titles for my blog posts. I mean, for memes like #WeekendCoffeeShare, I’ve gotten used to going with a predetermined format. With other diary-style posts though, I really struggle. And it doesn’t help that I have a weird idea that no two blog posts on my blog can ever have the exact same title.
How was your writing month?
A Multitude of Musings 
When I first started blogging in 2008, I wrote a post every day for a year. OMG, it was exhausting. Then I dropped to once a week. Then I invited hosts to contribute. Now I’m down to once a month. Where to from here? You’re doing good, Astrid.
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Thank you so much for your compliment. I’ve been blogging on WordPress ever since 2007 and always had this weird rule that if I hadn’t posted at least one blog post in each consecutive month, my blog would have to go. Thankfully, I haven’t had to give up on that many long-lasting projects that way so far.
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I haven’t been writing that much, other than on my blog, and I’m trying to be OK with that. I’m just not inclined to work on books for kindle when I can’t sell any…
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I understand not selling makes you feel less motivated, even though I’ve personally never written for profit. It would be comparable I guess to if I never got any response to my blog posts. I’d give up quickly too and resort to private journaling.
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Far and away the biggest task for software projects was to come up with a name for what we wrote. I suspect the same is true of books.
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That’s so interesting that coming up with an original name for your software projects was the biggest challenge. Wow, I never thought of it that way, haha.
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You will need that blurb when pitching a publisher or agent.
I used to post four to five times a week. Then three. Then once. Now I do two, and that’s good enough. You have to post what works for you.
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Oh, that makes sense. I thought the blurb was what went onto the back cover of books or on bookstores’ sites. Now I understand. Thanks for clarifying.
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Good enough is always plenty good to us!
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Thank you for saying that!
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I just write for my blog so it was pretty good I think.
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Oh, I’m glad about that. Thank you for sharing.
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I dont think I could come up with good book titles or blurbs! My writing month was ok, I managed to write a lot in october, I was happy with how the month went!
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I’m so glad your writing month was okay. You write a lot indeed, I admire you for it.
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Thanks, I appreciate that you admire me 💙😍
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