What Am I Doing Here? [A Book Blogger’s Reflections]

Part 1 – What Am I Doing Here? | Part 2 – Learning from Other Review Styles | Part 3 – Favourite Reviews I Wrote in 2019 | Part 4 – Developing a New Review Style | Part 5 – Reading Challenges & Community

Hello! It’s been awhile (if ever) since I wrote a post like this. Prepare yourself for a bit of rambly introspection. The purpose of this post is to:

• examine how my life has changed over the past year
• how those changes have impacted my blogging practice
• what changes I want to make to blogging going forward

It’s the first in a Sunday series that will run through to the end of the year. In this series, I will be considering various aspects of blogging and how I might change my habits, especially when it comes to reviewing. I want to engage in intentional self-reflection to set me up for blogging success in 2020.

What I’ve Been Up To

I started book blogging over five years ago. In that time, this blog has weathered (if only by hiatus) many life changes – living in Japan for a year, backpacking around Australia and New Zealand, moving across Canada to attend grad school. Since I started book blogging, I haven’t spent more than 18 months in one place, doing one thing. More often than not, the activity that occupied the bulk of my time (work, study, travel) changed every three or four months. I blogged whenever it was easy, settling into poor habits and rarely challenging myself. I never took the time to consider why and how I was writing.

This year, I have experienced the most notable transition so far. I graduated from library school in May. In the months leading up to that, I was applying to jobs and prepping for interviews. This takes a lot of brain power. Especially when you are also finishing your final semester of grad school. Immediately after graduating, I started working two jobs with irregular schedules. Thankfully, that did not last long. In August, I began a temporary full time position, originally for three months but now extended to the end of January. I am starting to settle into my life as someone who works a regular hours daytime job, someone beginning their career 😮

Ready to Dive In Again

While work has been thought-provoking and challenging and exciting, I’ve missed spending time on my own creative hobbies. Especially writing reviews. I haven’t published an in-depth review in months. I looked at some reviews I wrote earlier this year and found myself surprised. I had forgotten I could write something like that! For the first few months, work took a lot out of me. I wanted to come home and lie on the couch and read books or watch videos, not fire up the computer and write a post. But these past few weeks have felt like things are clicking into place. I’m developing a balanced routine of cooking, reading, yoga, and blogging. I’m ready to come home from work and embrace my evenings. I’m ready to dive back into the swing of things.

Who Am I Writing For?

I’ve shared a lot (for me) about my personal life in the above paragraphs because that will give context to what about I’m going to talk about next – writing reviews. When I started writing about books online (back in 2010 before I knew what book blogging was), the purpose was to have an outlet where I could share my personal reactions to what I was reading. It wasn’t to evaluate books and make recommendations or help readers decide whether to pick up a book. As I became more professionally interested in children’s literature and involved in the book blogging community, my review style shifted somewhat. However, my reviews continue to lean towards a personal reaction rather than an informational review, and the my review style or content can be quite inconsistent.

I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with sharing my personal thoughts on the books I read. That was my original purpose in creating this blog. I want it to remain so. But I have changed and my values have evolved since I began book blogging some years ago. I read and review a lot more middle grade. My day job is being a children’s librarian. I want to be careful to separate work and hobby. It is increasingly important for me, however, to consider a book’s suitability for children. I have alluded to this discussion in the past (“I’m graduating soon and I’ll have to think about this”). I’m finally thinking about it!

What’s Ahead

My current view is thus: I will continue to focus on sharing my personal thoughts and reactions. I will also incorporate a segment with a more professional tone, with the purpose of evaluating suitability for the intended audience and helping readers decide if they want to read the book. This segment will likely be similar to the annotations I’ve shared previously.

The remainder of this series will largely focus on how I can rework my own reviews by looking at the habits and styles of bloggers I admire and considering how I might let them influence my own work. I will also be considering (though not necessarily in this series) other changes to my blog. I started experimenting this past week with a three posts/week schedule, adding simple graphics to my posts (I’m trying my best, lol), and drafting posts later in the evening (it turns out I might write best at night 😲). While reviews will remain the staple, I also want to incorporate a wider variety of posts that could help me connect with the book blogging community.

If you’ve made it this far, thank-you for reading! 💕I hope you will stick around as I figure things out. Have you ever reevaluated how you blog? Do you have any tips for me?