Tag: blogging

Rethinking the Writing Routine

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Creativity Sessions, FantasyLeave a comment

One of my goals for this month is to write something at least every other day.

This is a bit of a new approach to writing for me, so I wanted to unpack it a bit and see how it’s going for me so far.

Writing Routines of Yore

I used to be able to sit down for a couple hours on a given evening and write several pages, or revise entire chapters. I have never been a write-every-day kind of writer, but I was definitely productive enough to publish a novel and several shorter stories after that.

Those days are long gone. At least, they are not very accessible to me at this point. I’ve struggled to maintain much of a writing routine since the height of the pandemic, when I was in the middle of drafting Uprooted. Those two-hour writing sessions only come a handful of times per month, if that, and that is not enough to write meaningfully.

Similar to my evolving exercise routine, I’ve slowly come to the realization that I need to do something different with my writing routine.

A Writing Routine for Normal Life

What I’ve always struggled to establish is a consistent writing routine in which I could pick away at projects bit by bit. Since I’m not an everyday-writer type, I need to find a different solution. That’s why my goal for this month is to write at least every other day.

I’ve elected to try tracking my writing every other day. I’m also tracking my writing differently.

I’ve always separated my writing from anything I did for this site. I used to have the bandwidth to manage this site separately from my actual writing routines. I’d write posts for this site, and then get some writing done. I just don’t have time to do that at the moment, and I need to stop making myself feel guilty for not writing, even when I need to spend some energy blogging.

So, any form of writing counts for my new routine: haiku, blogs, revisions, DnD character backgrounds. Any way in which I can exercise my creative writing muscles counts towards my goal of writing every other day in a given month.

Progress So Far

Here’s a quick rundown of how I’ve kept up with writing through the first 20 days of the month:

  • 3 haiku
  • 3 blogs
  • 3 revision sessions for Uprooted
  • 1 session working on a new Dungeons & Dragons character sheet

That’s 10 days out of 20, exactly every other day (ultimately, if not in practice. I’ve had to focus on writing sessions three days in a row once to keep up with my goal.)

I think this routine is working for me. It’s giving me the space to spend time on things I both need and want to spend time on, whether it’s keeping this site afloat, preparing for a new DnD campaign I’m really excited about, or working on my “big” work-in-progress novellas.

Overall, I need to hold myself accountable while being flexible with what I work on on a given day.

Steve D

Numberbrag 2020 and Best-Laid Plans

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

It’s (roughly) the beginning of a new year, so it’s time for another edition of one of my favorite series on this site: Numberbrag! If you’re new here, Numberbrag is my generally annual post where I review how my blog performed the previous year, using only WordPress stats. Here’s last year’s edition.

In that post, I alluded to a new blogging routine that really carried me through 2020: one long-form post and one haiku, on the same days and at the same times, every week. I occasionally missed my usual publication time, but I never missed a day. In short, my blogging routine for this year was nothing short of a massive success, for me personally and for my number-bragging.

Let’s get to it.

The Top-Line Numbers

First of all, very strange that 2021 is the eighth year of this site. Secondly, 2020 was pretty solid!

  • Views: 6,135
  • Visitors: 4,692
  • Likes: 923
  • Comments: 52
  • Posts: 134

Now, some folks might find the slight downward trend from 2018 to 2020 a little odd or even disconcerting. However, 2018 was the year I published my first novel. As part of the run-up to that publication, I used pay-per-click ads to drive traffic to this site, boosting the totals for 2018 by over 1,000 Visitors and Views. So that peak is a little inflated.

Secondly, I’m not the least bit concerned that 2020 did not match even 2017’s total Views. In 2017, we had two bloggers posting 3-5 times per week for a total of 262 posts. Want to know how many posts were published the last two years? 214 and 134. One hundred and thirty-four posts in 2020, in a year that started slowly, and my numbers are still on par with, if a little short of, past performance. That’s efficiency.

It also indicates quality of content. Check out this deeper annual comparison. (Note: I realize that the Total Posts in the below screenshot say 131, whereas the image above says 134. I know there is a logical if annoying reason for that happening in WordPress’s system, but I don’t remember what it is.)

2020 posts were waaaaaay down from previous years — every year since we started, in fact. Comments per post are steady, and Total Words are down. But Average likes per post is up (7.0), the second-highest rate we’ve ever had, and Words per post (404) is the highest ever. That means that the content we’re publishing here is more popular, even at higher word counts, where readers may get bored and leave.

This post is officially longer than 404 words, by the way.

The Fun Numbers

I’m going to skip over the usual Top 10 Posts section, because there’s not much different to say from any other year. Our new Home page clocked in at #4 with 184 Views. The other 9 on that list are old-familiars that were published prior to 2020.

What I’d rather look at are the categories I personally posted in this year. Marcy contributed 25 posts of her own, and I’m so happy she did. But this section is about me!

I ended last year’s Numberbrag by guesstimating how many posts I wanted to write in each category, so of course I have to follow-up on that. Here’s the gist of what I predicted/wanted to achieve this time last year:

  • Haiku – 50+ posts
  • Fantasy – 16+
  • Reviews – 15+
  • Creativity Sessions – 12+
  • Marketing Your Novel – 10+

So what did I actually write last year?

  1. Haiku – 55 posts
  2. Fantasy – 15 posts
  3. Reviews – 12 posts
  4. Creativity Sessions – 10 posts
  5. Marketing Your Novel – 8 posts

Wow. Chalk. I’m honestly surprised at how close my predictions were. My Reviews were only down by 3, even though I stopped commuting to work and thus couldn’t listen to Audible as reliably. Creativity Sessions and Marketing Your Novel were each down by 2, but that can be explained by the 3 extra Haiku I posted on non-haiku days when I was too busy or stressed to write a real post.

Also, I definitely would have written at least two more Marketing posts if I had gone to a number of conventions greater than 0.

So, a boring rundown, if precision can be considered boring.

I honestly thought that section was going to be longer, so I’ll round out this post with some more generic stats.

We’ve done “Thank You” type posts in the past when we’ve reached certain milestones, but I didn’t do any of that this past year, because my more sensible blogging schedule meant I consistently had other things to talk about.

As of this writing, we’ve eclipsed 28,000 Visitors and 40,000 Views. We also now have over 700 followers. (Shout-out to all the fitness bloggers who likely found us because I talked about yoga a lot in 2020.)

That’s awesome. Thank you, dear readers, for your continued support. Despite the lack of humility in this post (it’s called Numberbrag!), I really am chuffed that this site has evolved so much over the last 7+ years, and yet continues to have an audience. I don’t particularly care that we don’t see 100 hits per day or thousands of followers. I’m always happy to see familiar avatars liking and commenting on our posts, so I hope you all keep coming back. I’ve firmly settled into a rhythm with this site, and I’m sticking to it.

At least until I need another change-up.

Steve D

August Writing Goals and Recap

On By Marcy ErbIn On Storytelling, Writers - Marcy Erb1 Comment

That sound you just heard was July whooshing by and now it is August. I confess I did nothing towards my writing goals (with the exception of posting here regularly) until the last week of July. I co-procrastinated (if that’s not a word, it should be) those alongside a work writing project that had a hard submission deadline at the end of July. But! I got everything in on time (well, more or less).

Recap of July Goals (linked here for accountability purposes):

1. Keep posting here on Mondays and on my other blog, Illustrated Poetry, on Tuesdays.

Did this! At least one post per week on each blog. Didn’t adhere to the precise day of the week so much on my other blog, but eh.

2. Rewrite the first chapter of Enjoinjure.

This I put off until the absolute last minute. I do mean opening the file on July 30 and working on it on July 31. I’m fudging a little because I didn’t really attempt to smooth out and combine the new bits with the old bits until this weekend, which is technically August.

3. Put together an outline for my current untitled story.

I did do this!

I kept the bar low on these writing goals, I know. But overall it worked – I finally addressed that first chapter, which I had been actively avoiding.

Continue reading “August Writing Goals and Recap” →

Numberbrag 2019! And 2020 Plans

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

2019 was a weird year. I helped raise an infant into a toddler. I lost my job, was unemployed for four months, and found a new job in a totally unexpected place. And, oh yeah, I transferred five years’ worth of website content to a new domain!

I legitimately forgot that we switched from Red String PaperCuts to Evening Satellite as our main site in 2019, until I read over my numberbrag post from this time last year.

In that post, I focused on the types of content featured most heavily on this site in 2018, and some loose ideas about where I thought we were going in 2019. I’ll do something similar for 2019 and 2020.

Continue reading “Numberbrag 2019! And 2020 Plans” →

2020 Programming Note

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

2019 brought a ton of changes for me personally, professionally, and authorly over the last year-plus, and a lot of that has seeped into this site, whether I intended it to or not.

I hinted at some plans to freshen up my blogging a bit in my Write Day post. It’s taken me six months to realize this, but I need to change up my blogging habits.

For the foreseeable future, I’m only going to post twice per week:

  • My weekly Haiku Sunday
  • One longer-form post on Wednesdays

Keep reading if you want some details.

Continue reading “2020 Programming Note” →

Public Service Announcement: RSPC Will be Migrating

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

It’s just time. I’ve been running both this website and EveningSatellite.com, our book imprint, for almost two years, and I’ve felt more and more like we didn’t need two websites.

So this blog will be migrating to EveningSatellite.com in the next couple of weeks. My sources on the interwebs tell me that I should be able to do this with no detriment to our followers, content, etc., since they’re both WordPress.com sites, but I am wary.

So if you suddenly come here and it looks a bit different, that’s why. Continue reading “Public Service Announcement: RSPC Will be Migrating” →

With Our Writer Powers Combined!

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'Adamo3 Comments

mls-weech

I went to my first actual book launch on Saturday. Fellow blogger and now real-life pal MLS Weech released his second book, Caught, on Saturday at a comic book shop about 20 minutes from my house. Continue reading “With Our Writer Powers Combined!” →

Marketing Your Novel: Types of Indirect and Content Marketing

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Publishing, Writers - Steve D'Adamo2 Comments

digital-marketing-1563467_1280

Disclosure: I work for a marketing firm. While I have no formal education in marketing or business and would never claim to be an “expert”, working in online marketing for two companies over the last  four years has taught me a lot. This series will explore the marketing strategies I will use to promote my upcoming novel. Also, I know free stock photos are lame. I’ll get my own legit photo for this series at some point, I promise.

As we move through this series, I’m going to try and tackle each subject in a logical manner, going deeper and deeper into the many topics and subtopics within marketing without jumping around too much. Thus, some of this information may seem repetitive, because we summarized a lot of it in my first post on where to begin with marketing your novel.

Today, we’ll look more closely at indirect marketing, since this type of marketing is more readily available to most writers, through the magic of the internet — and content marketing. Continue reading “Marketing Your Novel: Types of Indirect and Content Marketing” →

Marketing Your Novel: Where to Begin?

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Publishing, Writers - Steve D'Adamo14 Comments

Disclosure: I work for a marketing firm. While I have no formal education in marketing or business and would never claim to be an “expert”, working in online marketing for two companies over the last  four years has taught me a lot. This series will explore the marketing strategies I will use to promote my upcoming novel. Also, I know free stock photos are lame. I’ll get my own legit photo for this series at some point, I promise.

Telling people that I work in online marketing typically induces one of two reactions in people. Either, “holy crap, how could you work in such a scummy, manipulative industry,” or “wow, marketing my work is so intimidating, where do I begin?” Continue reading “Marketing Your Novel: Where to Begin?” →

Friday Write-Day: Numberbrag & Blogging is Weird

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

fwd-numberbrag-blogging

Numbers are cool. They can be enlightening or maddeningly erratic. Either way, I like to take some time every once in a while to review the stats for RSPC. Let’s jump in.

It’s the humble-number-brag! Continue reading “Friday Write-Day: Numberbrag & Blogging is Weird” →