WordPress Daily Prompt: Personal Space

To what extent is your blog a place for your own self-expression and creativity vs. a site designed to attract readers? How do you balance that?  If sticking to certain topics and types of posts meant your readership would triple, would you do it?

Sissinghurst Cemetary, England

Something like this will probably be the only place that I will ever have for my self-expression and creativity, at least a site like this might attract a few visitors: even the odd bunch of flowers.

First and mainly why do I blog?: because I enjoy writing. I do not know what Daily Prompt intends to do with my day and being somewhere in the middle of Europe I only get the prompt at the beginning of the afternoon. I am retired so do not have to go anywhere or do anything unless I want to. When I write, I can organise myself and what I write is something spontaneous for me. I do not plan for hours in advance, my day is not devoted to blogging and writing. It might be that a flash of inspiration attacked my grey haired brain and I write a piece of fiction, a story, let my imagination run wild.

There are no certain topics that I stick to. I write what I want to. Of course I am flattered when readers might click a like and read what I write and make comments. Here perhaps praise for the organisation of WordPress. I originally blogged in Blogger, but that is really only for you and yourself. The rest you had to find out and hope that the odd visitor arrived at your site. I then discovered Multiply which no longer exists. I met a lot of very nice people, discovered that writers’ groups exist, photography groups as well and this gave me impetus to join in. At that time I was still a working woman, so my blogs were an evening opportunity, or when work was not so hectic, I managed to fit something in during the day (I hope no-one belonging to my past working life is reading this). Multiply stopped doing the social stuff and went commercial. With joy I read last week that this did not work and it will be closing for ever at the end of the month. In the meanwhile being retired I had to find a new home for my super prize worthy writings, so their devious plans on making big money backfired.

I had backed-up now and again in WordPress and took the organisation under the magnifying glass. Behold, I found so many different blogging and writing opportunities that I had to make a choice. The WordPress standard is good, not just “I cooked spaghetti for dinner” and I am now here, throwing my bits and pieces into the WordPress challenge world.

Someone called E.L.James wrote a novel called “50 Shades of something…….?” I never read this novel, not my sort of thing and as far as literature is concerned, I do not think it was a masterpiece. The subject was sex and that always sells well. If you go into details with all the “ins and outs” (figuratively speaking of course) she landed a hit, sold a lot of books and made a lot of money. I think she was just writing something called fan fiction, not really expecting to have such a success. She was lucky to be at the right place at the right time and found the market space for her writings.

Now if my blogs are discovered as the Master Blogs of all times, I get a Blogging Pulitzer prize and suddenly am rolling in money, then it is more luck than judgement. Topics are this and that for me. Sometimes I am forced to write for my felines (at the threat of protruding claws resulting in blood spashes on the computer screen) and sometimes I might have a dream or a memorable happening during my boring day-to-day life. That gives me food for thought blogging and so I blog about it.

So readership, veni, vidi and I will vici. I appreciate every little hello, even if it is combined with “what a load of rubbish”. At least you have been here and seen it.