This week’s prompt: How much time does blogging take out of your life weekly?
Hmmm, this is a difficult question for me. Partly because I have ADHD, so time is a bit slippy and hard for me to quantify. But also because this question makes quite a big assumption – that I work on my blog every week for roughly the same amount of time. But I don’t. I tend to do a flurry of posts and schedule them ahead of time (this is my 8th or 9th post I’ve written today just for this prompt) then the blog sort of takes care of itself for a while. Then when I’m running out of scheduled posts or the mood strikes I’ll do another batch. This works much better for me – it means I don’t have to do things at the last minute, and I can chase the dopamine for as long as it lasts whenever inspiration hits. It’s what I’ve done for years now, and I find that it’s much better for the way my brain works. I can always go back and edit pre-written posts if I want to update them, but if nothing new comes along, they’re ready to go. Doing it this way means I might spend seven or eight hours over the course of a few days writing posts and working on the blog, but then I’ll only write one post a week when I’ve got something for a Monday reading update, try to remember to respond to comments and publish them, add the link to the link-ups and that’s about it. Maybe an hour or so for the weeks I’m not doing batch writing. I try to write reviews as I go, but I’m bad at that (which is why there are several books I’ve read in the past year or two that I loved but haven’t reviewed – I left them too long and now the details are too fuzzy so I’ll have to re-read before I can review).
Do any of you take a similar approach to mine? If so, do you think it’s because your brain is better suited to it? Or do you write posts as you go and find it manageable to keep up that way?
The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly blog link-up that gives participants a different book-related question to ponder each week, and allows them to share their thoughts, find new blogs to follow and connect with new readers. The Hop was originally created by Jennifer at Crazy for Books and is now hosted by Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. To see a list of upcoming prompts go here.