I wanted to blog for years. I kept making plans, but the time was never right to actually start. When I finally did, it was (uncharacteristically, for me) on impulse. I found I had a particular blog post I wanted — almost needed — to write, so I did. Then I needed to a place to post it, so I asked Kate to help me set everything up and the blog was born.
My life doesn’t follow much of a routine; I do things in bursts. I was worried that when life got busy I’d run out of things to say. I resolved to view my first semester of blogging as a kind of trial run.
Now that a new semester’s starting, I’ve been reevaluating how things have gone.
- I didn’t run out of things to say, as it turns out. What did happen was that I went through periods (especially when I was tired) where I felt I couldn’t write properly.
- I wanted to write half my posts explicitly for other Christians and the other half for a general audience. The half for a general audience didn’t happen much.
- I didn’t like the tone of my writing. It was too uniformly dogmatic. I wanted to sound more like I was musing and less like I was pronouncing. In some cases, at least.
- I had in mind a vague idea of having posts of varying lengths, each with a different feel and purpose. Instead, all my short posts got long because I have a compulsion to explain anything that might be misunderstood.
- I wanted my tags and categories to be more relevant to the blog than they are. Instead they just ended up confusing.
- Overall, I’m reasonably happy with it though.
So here’s what I hope to do this semester:
- Use the calendar app to automatically schedule posts far enough ahead of time that I don’t always have to write something in finished form. Then when I am feeling fluent as a writer I can polish and schedule posts; when I am not I can plan new posts to work on later.
- Deliberately write one post a week (or so) aimed at a non-theist. I have lots of interesting personal conversations with students who are atheists or agnostics; I’ll just imagine I’m writing to one of them.
- Write some of my posts as descriptions of what I am currently thinking about without explaining all the background. If people misunderstand, too bad. Later, I can re-write it in a more balanced way if I need to. I’m not sure I can do this one, actually. My compulsion to explain is nearly irresistible 🙂
- Pick a topic and write a semester-long series of posts explaining everything I think I know about it.
So the second trial-run semester starts today. At the end of the semester I’ll take a look at my (increasingly irrelevant) tags and categories, and reorganize the blog to more accurately reflect whatever it’s become by then.
Thanks, readers!
