How I'm going to blog better in 2013!

Phew - practically Christmas already. It's been a great year for blogging and my book has been selling well, which is really exciting.

But as you can probably tell from the date of my last post, I haven't been practising all that I preach! Yes folks, I confess it's been a while since my last blog post here. Why is that? And what are the lessons to be learnt?

Stick to your editorial calendar
When I started this blog, my editorial calendar was stuck to the wall in front of my desk and I kept to it pretty well, but then one month I was busy on other things and forgot to update it... and before long I was 'ad-hoc' posting (rather like this) which is ALWAYS more work than devising and sticking to a schedule.

Keep your ambitions sustainable
Three posts a week was fine at first, when the book was launched and was being reviewed I was doing talks and writing posts was relatively easy, blogging was top of my mind. But that frequency wasn't sustainable over the long term.

Follow your passion
Although blogging about blogging is still on my agenda, my interest in poetry has really blossomed this year and as a consequence much of my blogging has been over at Poetgal. If you find yourself blogging more about Topic A than Topic B, the signs are trying to tell you something. It's REALLY hard to blog about a subject if there's something ELSE you're burning to blog about!

So what am I going to do about it? Well, this blog isn't my only neglected blog at the moment - robinhoughton.com has also seen less action lately! So rather than beat myself up about not blogging equally often across all sites, here's my plan for 2013:

1. Create a sustainable editorial calendar for my bloggingforcreatives blog, based on, say, two posts a month, for the next 6 months. These can be based on chapters from the book, tips and ideas from expert bloggers and other 'timeless' but useful information.
2. Create an outline editorial calendar for my robinhoughton.com blog, again based on two posts a month - but if I'm not inspired to write I won't give myself a ticking off. It's my main business blog and most items there are 'thought pieces' brought on by topical issues or events, and I do think that if I don't have anything specific to say which adds value to the debate, it's best not to post.
3. Continue to blog at Poetgal, when inspired to do so, and not feel guilty about it!

Wish me luck! What are your blogging goals for 2013? What went wrong in 2012 and what worked for you? Let me know!

(Image credit: Origami Penguin as featured on How About Orange)

Some of my favourite writers & poetry blogs

Just for a change I thought I would give a shout out to some of my favourite writers' and poets' blogs.

Should a poet have a blog? Hmmm ... well there is a school of thought that says NO - better to preserve a sense of mystery - less is more!

But I admit I enjoy writing my own poetry-themed blog which is kind of a diary/work in progress / confessional type of thing. Maybe if I ever make it big as a poet I might regret having exposed so much of myself, warts and all, but for now it's a lot of fun to connect with others in a similar situation and share my success, failures and everything in between.

Anyway, here are three of my favourite writer-bloggers...

Josephine Corcoran, aka @CorkyCorks on Twitter: Josephine is an experienced writer and teacher of creative writing, and her blog is a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration including reviews, comments and questions about the writing process. She also has a companion blog for poems, And Other Poems, which is growing into a rich anthology.

Abegail Morley, The Poetry Shed: Abegail posts reviews, featured poems & poets, news of competitions and events, listings of poetry books and magazines, and some useful tips from magazine editors about what they look for.

Sarah Salway as well as being the current 'Canterbury Laureate' is a prolific blogger, the subtitle of her blog being 'Handmade stories and seeds of inspiration' - yes there is a teeny bit of gardening stuff in there but LOTS of interesting, quirky posts about writing and writers. I like the way she mixes up the media - plenty of photos & video, and generous (copious) references to other writers.