Rising to the challenge: blog introspection

I’ve been reading other bloggers’ responses to this and have been enjoying them, so I thought I’d give Guylty’s blog introspection challenge a go myself!

So, this is me taking stock after only 10 months of more or less regular blogging…

Part one, in which I answer half of the questions already!

1. What made me start blogging

I have always felt this need to express myself in writing. I had read Anne Frank’s diary at the age of 13; her diary inspired me to write one myself, which I did in my teens/early twenties.

Meeting my DH changed that, things I had entrusted to my diary I now entrusted to him and did not feel the need for a diary anymore. The kids came and especially when they were small – working and taking care of them – there simply was no time to think about anything as ‘frivolous’ as writing. I did write daycare diaries for the kids (they went to daycare 3 days a week before they were old enough for school) – the teacher would write about their day at daycare and I would write back and tell of their evenings or the weekend. I enjoyed that but once they started school that stopped and I had no more writing goals. I’d write small pieces on my laptop, I used to have a whole list of ideas of things I could write about, I also wrote fan fiction – but what to do with that? I do have a North & South fanfic posted on C19 (wrote that 9 years ago!) and some small things on fanfiction.net but I’m not that great a writer and I felt the urge to write other stuff.

I’ve been on discussion forums and while fun, I never seem to last on them long. I guess I wanted to be more, I don’t know, in charge maybe? I’d been thinking about blogging for some time, but what angle to take? What theme? What to write about? And then one day, two years ago, after I had read John Green’s book “The Fault in Our Stars” I just had this huge need to express what I felt about that book as it had had a huge impact on me.

Not only did I want to express what I felt about that book, I just wanted to send it out into the universe! And so, I started a blog where I posted that. I was going to do posts in letter-form (the one I had written about The Fault in our Stars was called ‘Dear John Green’) but after I had posted that I couldn’t think of who else to write to and more importantly what about? I struggled with that on and off and it took me one (and a quarter) year to finally say to myself, “why do I need a strict format? What do I want from my blog – to ‘wow’ people with my original format or the ‘original’ things I have to say? Or do I just want to throw things out there, into the universe, and see what happens?” I decided on the latter and I knew it would be a hodge podge of topics. So, I have only started blogging for real since last fall, I’m a real newbie to this. The blog has turned out to be a lot about Richard Armitage as I adore the man…

Woof indeed!

… but it really is about all sorts of other stuff as well. Just a chaotic mess of topics, which suits me fine.

2. The significance of my blog’s name

I never kept a list of names that I had considered, but I had all sorts of really stupid names come up in all that time I was struggling to figure out what to do for a blog. In the end, I just thought, “Eff it, I’m keeping it simple”. My name really is Esther, I was actually named for “Queen Esther” from the bible.

Megillat Esther (source: http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/guide/hs-foreword.html)

I like books and stories and films and actors/actresses playing out stories so that just popped into my head and that’s what it became. Not highly original or imaginitive but there you go…

3. My usual blogging process

After deciding to not trouble myself and make the whole blogging thing difficult, I decided I’d just blog about whatever occupies my thoughts at the time. Not too much personal stuff, I have other outlets for that. I just want to blog about things I like to watch or read or that touch me in some way. I did wonder whether I could ever find enough to write about, but I find that topics just seem to pop up here and there and off I go. I never force myself to write – if I have nothing I want to share, I just stay quiet. I have no set schedule or topics, it’s all very much me flying by the seat of my pants. And then sometimes when I write, one topic morphs into another (I mean, when I started writing about rock band Muse the other day, I had no idea I would end up linking that to Richard Armitage, it just sort of happened…).

I want few rules, I set myself no assignments and even though I can think of several topics I would like to write about, I will only actually do so when the real motivation to explore/explain myself further arises. I write everything in one go, I don’t keep endless drafts anywhere. I take my time writing (especially a long post like this one) and then hit “post” when I feel it’s good enough. Oh, and I write in the evening, after the kids have gone to bed – so sometimes writing or not writing is also about how much energy I have left to do so. Again, I never force myself to write, if I don’t feel like it/don’t have time/don’t have the energy, etc., I just don’t do it. So far, I am liking this very free approach.

4. What’s your favourite post?

I don’t think I have one! The current one I am writing, I suppose. I do like to go back to read some older stuff now and again, as everything I write about I have cared about in one way or another. Which posts I go back and read again depends on what I feel like reading at that time.

5. Most viewed post: the article / Richard Armitage interview in a Dutch newspaper that I translated from Dutch to English.

6. Which post continues to give?

I’m not sure I really have one. I’m quite new to this and my blog doesn’t get that many views or comments. I am, however, forever grateful to Servetus of https://meandrichard.wordpress.com/ who linked to my blog after I had collected reviews about Richard Armitage in the Hobbit and suddenly made my blog a blog that is actually read by others than myself! Thank you, Servetus!

7. Most comments: My Wet shirts and bare chests post, which I still like to look at occasionally. 😉 Most “likes” were for the A special gift post where I shared the “The Crucible” painting my mom had painted for me for my birthday.

8. Which post was the most difficult to write?

I had vowed I wouldn’t write about my personal life too much, but that does creep in. The posts I wrote about my father being ill and passing away were the hardest. Not for what they said maybe, as they weren’t that long. Just writing those simple words was hard enough.

Challenge to be continued in part two… sometime..

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(Modified to add: part 2 here and part 3 here)