When I was a teen writer, I got it into my head that I needed a blog to be a published author.
It was the early 2010s, my brain was still forming. We’ll cut younger me some slack.
Fast forward to 15 years later, featuring 10 of those years successfully running said blog and another 5 burned out and regretting everything.
But after experimenting with newsletters the last couple years and spending the last few months debating this particular venture… I’m back to blogging!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Hi, I’m A.J., your neighborhood Appalachian witch and author of romantic fantasy and folk horror. Not an aspiring writer because I’ve written things, but certainly aspiring to be published.
the (blog) lore
Is that a thing? Let’s pretend. So teen me decided I wanted to be an author as my dream career (naturally). Grand ideas and all. As many undiagnosed neurodivergent kids are wont to do, I researched! I looked up all the authors I was reading at the time and a lot of them not only had websites, but blogs. People seemed to really like hearing what they had to say.
Obviously if you wanted to be a published author, you had to have a blog, so if I wanted to be published, I should start one now so I’m ready.
Yes, this is the logic we were working with at the time. I’m not proud of it…
I launched my new writer blog and you know what? No one read it. No one visited it let alone read it. Total flop. I couldn’t believe it! Why didn’t anyone want to read what I had to say about writing and my stories?1
Following that crushing defeat, I decided I just needed to provide more topics for people to read about and books seemed like a great choice for a writer to talk about. I drafted a few book reviews and the rest, as they say, was history.
I spent 10 years as a book blogger/reviewer. I stopped talking about writing. And after the first year or so, I mostly forgot why I started blogging in the first place. I simply enjoyed it!
The writer enjoyed writing (shocker), but there really was something about long form content that appealed to me. Plus, I had a whole platform to rave and rant about books! The dream!
For a little while, it was just me and my blog. Soon, though, there was the Twitter bookish community, many seeking out a new space after Tumblr communities imploded, others just starting in for the first time (like me!). It was the water cooler, a place to connect with others, find new voices to read, and have those conversations that didn’t fit into a blog post.
Oh, the days of early Twitter.
Of course, things changed. Instagram — bookstagram — began to dominate. Tiktok took over. Algorithms and tech overlords turned platforms into advertisement hellscapes. Toxicity was left unchecked, being online went from the water cooler to doomscrolling, and everything shifted.
I’ll admit, I got lost in the sauce, trying to keep up with the changes and stay “relevant” because… well I’m not really sure why anymore. It seemed like the logical choice, but in hindsight I lost track of my goal of being a writer not a content creator and blogger. By the time I had that part figured out, the burnout had already set in and I stepped away from everything for a few years while I tried to reclaim who I was and what that meant for an online presence.
Did I even need to be online? Couldn’t I just disappear into the void?!
It was tempting, don’t get me wrong. But unfortunately (for me) I found that I actually like creating content. Yes, blog posts, but also graphics and stuff for social media. It’s a creative outlet in a different way from writing fiction. But my relationship with content was in the gutter, requiring far more reflection and consideration than I could give it in those first months (years…).
newsletters as blogs
I tried the whole newsletter-but-it’s-actually-a-blog thing but it felt… forced? Maybe too many expectations because it was being delivered straight to someone’s inbox2 so it felt like it should hold something more. That it should be more. It’s assigning value to something before it even exists.
Our inboxes are flooded on a regular basis. I don’t even want to think about how many emails I have unread, many of which are newsletters I had a genuine interest in but got buried in the inbox. Anything I might send out is just going to get lost in that same shuffle and you don’t need more clutter there either.
Perhaps it’s just my own perception but, as a (former) blogger, I’ve also always considered a blog to be a space where I can post more regularly without bothering anyone 😅 Compared to a newsletter, where I’m really looking for updates from my favorite authors, artists, and other creators to make sure I didn’t miss something important.
It’s a very skewed perception, I’m aware. And it’s likely not the smartest approach to “maximize efficiency” and whatever other buzzwords you want to throw at it. But maybe that’s… okay. Not everything needs to be efficient3 or streamlined or what have you.
So after flipping between newsletter platforms and looking for that right “fit” I’m back in my own space and for the first time in years it feels right.
of blogging and algorithms and discovery
When I started thinking about blogging again, I thought of the title of this post first before anything else. What does blogging look like in an age of algorithms?
Places like Substack have a built in social feed and recommendations to help serve content to you, but I left Substack years ago and have no intention of returning. Sharing content on platforms like Bluesky or Threads or Instagram works… sort of, if you can break it up into bite sized posts strung together that intrigue and delight.
Each has its own culture to contend with alongside algorithms pushing your content—or not—to new readers (well, except Bluesky but its lack of algorithm creates a different sort of challenge).
We live in a world where content feels almost predetermined the moment you open an app, and even if you create it, spend hours crafting the perfect caption, the most enticing graphics, it’s all somewhere else that isn’t your space with little control over who actually sees it.
Don’t get me wrong, I still post on those platforms. I’m weak and feed the algorithmic social media machine as much as anyone else, and I’ll own that. Content in short form also makes it more digestible for the casual scroller.
But I wanted a space that didn’t fit that mold. To rave and ramble (and maybe rant) about whatever I’m thinking about. To stop focusing on the act of creating content as a product and more as a discussion. To create in a way beyond my fictional stories as a form of personal enjoyment.
To not worry if anyone will read it.
That was a whole process to work through, the feeling of “what if no one reads what I write” and “what if no one cares” bouncing around my head. I realized that was the crux of a lot of my burnout previously, with blogging and with fiction writing.
I stopped creating for myself and was focused on creating for others and their approval.
Algorithms only reinforced the behavior. It became a game of “beating” the algorithm, getting more views, more comments, more likes. And leaving only terrible feelings behind. An energy vampire.
It’s been years since I started unpacking those feelings but it rears its ugly head now and then.
I feel like reclaiming joy has been a theme for me this year. It’s neither a quick nor easy process, and yet is vital is this era of *gestures at world*.
But what could I possibly have to talk about???
Probably writing. Books. Publishing. Other stuff TBD? I don’t have to worry about trying to fit my in a box so an algorithm knows exactly where to share it (or more accurately not as feels like the case so often).
It’s freeing in a way I didn’t quite expect.
Maybe it’s a cry for help, a need to feel like I have a little control over the thing I’m putting time and effort into where it can simply be. Maybe it’s the natural cycles circling back.
This blog isn’t part of an existing ecosystem. Will I share post links elsewhere? Of course! But it also exists on its own and I low-key love that.
I’ll admit, I missed this. To be fair, I did come up with LiveJournal as a teen so brain-dumping long posts about random thoughts is built into my psyche at this point.
I miss the days of having a million bookmarks for all my favorite blogs and visiting them as a part of a weekly routine. There was something more… intentional about it. Some of those sites still exist and I look forward to rediscovering them alongside new ones to restart this practice. And this blog will be my contribution.
what this looks like for you
Well. If you’re reading this, you’re already in. Congrats! Welcome to my rambles! For those that came over from my previous “newsletter”, you might have seen this post preview in your inbox. You can unsubscribe from those any time or subscribe below if you want to get them in the future. This is separate from my newsletter which I’ll be using for announcements and, well, news.
Basically if you want to see more rambles, bookmark my blog. If you’re only interested in writing/publishing news from me, the newsletter is the way to go.
(Yes having 2 different sign-ups is annoying but it was that or pay for a platform that allows newsletter segmentation and I just can’t justify that cost right now.)
I’m planning to post whenever the muse strikes. Trying to adhere to yet another schedule in my life is just asking for this venture to fail before it really begins but it also means I can promise you’re not going to see more than a few posts a month at most.
Until the next time, here’s to escaping the algorithm and reclaiming joy 💜
- I miss those days when I had confidence and way too much fucking audacity. Could use a pinch of that now and then these days. ↩︎
- Granted, you might be reading this in your inbox right now but it was published to the web with the intent of a blog first and my brain sees it differently. Brains, they’re little weirdos, aren’t they? ↩︎
- My neurodivergent brain would love to disagree here because it loves efficiency but there are times where it likes to slow down too. ↩︎
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