blogging – Notebook

Blogging with a small “b”

March 7, 2018March 7, 2018 Cheri Lucas Rowlands4 Comments

A snippet from a post by Tom Critchlow on small b blogging:

But what is lost by following big B blogging? By chasing audience we lose the ability to be ourselves. By writing for everyone we write for no one. Too often I read things otherwise smart people have written for places like Fast Company and my eyes glaze over. Personal identity is necessarily watered down. Yes those places have large audiences but they’re shallow audiences. They don’t care about you at all. Your writing washes through their feeds like water.

Instead – I think most people would be better served by subscribing to small b blogging. What you want is something with YOUR personality. . . . Writing that can live and breathe in small networks. Scale be damned.

I’ve pretty much stopped blogging on my personal site completely for various reasons: apathy; inability to let go in front of an audience; lack of motivation; disinterest in media and tech; unwillingness to stay plugged in and part of the stream… I just don’t care anymore. I work in tech, I work with writers and influencers, I write for a massive audience online for work, blah blah blah. But on a personal level, I’m in a very different headspace.

Still, Tom’s post reminded me of what I used to enjoy about blogging — there was a period of time, about five or so years ago, when I was really engaged and connected to my network, especially on Twitter, and got my work noticed and featured in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and other big outlets. While I’d always written online with an audience in mind, my favorite part about blogging was ultimately writing for myself, reading and learning and deepening my knowledge of things along the way, and documenting a wider web of ideas in my very own online space. I remember doing all of this because I truly enjoyed it — my site was an extension of me. Publishing on it made me feel more complete. And it still exists, but now mainly as a relic. I just don’t need it as I once did.

But anyway, I like what he says about “forgetting the big B blogging model” and not chasing an audience, or scale, or page views. It’s such a simple thing, but somewhere along the way, I completely forgot how to write for myself, how to face inward, how to be me.

h/t @photomatt

Big thoughts on a tiny screen

May 22, 2017May 22, 2017 Cheri Lucas Rowlands5 Comments

It took me days to collect fragments and half-thoughts for a recent blog post. Stringing words together was, as usual, incredibly difficult. I usually promote new blog posts on Instagram, and when I typed up a caption about the post and how I’d had a hard time expressing my thoughts last week, those 206 words came so much easier there.

I think the tiny caption field on Instagram makes the process of writing less intimidating. I type deep thoughts on that small screen without any pressure, while here — on my laptop screen and WordPress editor — it often feels like my thoughts must be worthy of this big blank page.

Just writing things down

March 9, 2017March 9, 2017 Cheri Lucas Rowlands2 Comments

From “A Mushy Love Letter About Blogging” at From the Fringe:

“I don’t work with brands, I don’t have things to sell, I just like writing things down. So, whilst I’m not going to pretend that I don’t care about numbers and followers, I’ve learnt that, for me, blogging has somewhat transcended all of that.”

❤

Ready for spring

February 16, 2017 Cheri Lucas RowlandsLeave a comment

After going on trip after trip after trip, my husband and I always say we’ll stop traveling for a time, so as we entered 2017, we had clear, travel-free calendars through the spring. And then somehow, I agreed to go on a work trip to Salt Lake City last week. And in a few days, we’re driving up to Lake Tahoe for the holiday. Then I’m off to Nashville for a team meetup in April and then a bachelorette weekend for a dear friend in May. That takes us into early summer, when we’ll be off to the Mediterranean.

This is what a travel-free 2017 looks like. And I’m not complaining, but it’s just funny how traveling just happens. There is no need to plan.

* * *

I’m looking forward to spring — these Northern California storms and atmospheric rivers from the Pacific have been surprisingly severe, and while it’s great we’ve gotten so much rain in the past few months, Mother Nature has dumped it on us all at once. Part of a tree fell on our house during one of the first big storms in January so we had to fix a hole in our roof, and we also dug a temporary trench in our yard to divert floodwater from our neighbor’s property. Fortunately, though, our little lot has held up relatively OK compared to all the damage we’ve seen throughout Sonoma County, caused by massive flooding, downed trees, and mudslides.

I’ve started a few posts here and there over the past month that I’d abandoned — mainly about how we adopted two adorable cats last month, or anxiety over the state of the US and the world, or the familiar feeling of apathy in my “professional” life, and whatnot. It’s gotten harder to string sentences together for a blog post, and I’ve noticed I don’t feel that urge to share my thoughts — or my life — online, with both people I know and don’t know. When I sit down at my laptop to post something, whether on a blog or Facebook, it increasingly feels like I’m in a phony, forced moment — like I’m siphoning what’s left of my thoughts, and the words that appear on paper are residual.

I have never really felt this way with Instagram, where I post regularly, which — I suppose — is a testament to its instantness. But even there I find my habits evolving — growing bored with pretty travel and tiny house snapshots and opening up to sharing simple moments around the house and during my week. Perhaps those more frequent mundane shots are a way to fill in the holes created by my thinned blogging presence, I don’t know.

Shorter

January 4, 2017January 11, 2017 Cheri Lucas Rowlands7 Comments

From Elizabeth Spiers:

One of my resolutions is to get in the habit of writing more frequently, and part of that is learning to write shorter. When I first started blogging in 2000, this was not a problem. A paragraph-long post felt like enough, if that was what was warranted. Now I feel like I have to write a complete 1500 word essay every time I sit down to write something, and it’s not good for my writing . . .

Yes. This. Exactly.

Recently, I’ve found little ways to trick me into “writing” — whatever that entails. Sometimes it’s crafting mediocre haikus on my blog about my new home or publishing tiny poems in Instagram captions. Other times, I’ll start a blog post and then abandon it, which I realize is just another way to free-write — and totally fine. And while I’m not a goal-setting enthusiast each January, I do like Elizabeth’s idea from her blogging resolution post: no posts over 300 words. She states a concrete, firm goal. But it’s totally reachable, even for someone as currently apathetic about writing as me.

As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I think the writer’s block is due to something as simple as my theme on my main blog; how can a lapsed writer motivate herself to write if her blog is set up as a magazine-style site that best showcases longform writing? Perhaps I set myself up to fail, each time. And I think this is why this theme, on the site you’re on now, has been working somewhat well. It’s a blog, plain and simple. No bells and whistles, no photos, no time ever spent pruning and customizing it. A digital piece of blank paper that doesn’t care — doesn’t judge — when I scribble unformed, unfinished crap on it.

For a moment, I’d considered changing things up here, or migrating all of my followers from my other site, but I think both would be a mistake.

So for now, it’s just me and (the very few of) you. Hello and happy new year.