Even though I identify as a Plantser when it comes to writing fiction, blogging is a different story. I plan my posts ahead of time. This allows me to gather any information I might need and give the material the proper attention so I’m not having to rush it two days before its intended release date.
While there are benefits to working like this, things don’t always go according to plan and I end up moving things around to accommodate for those changes.
This week, I’m sharing a handful of reasons I may decide to hold off on uploading a blog post.
Something Suddenly Came Up
I write my blog posts in advance. Between writing and my day job, and the chance that life might get in the way of things, I want to make sure that I have content ready to go on the chance something happens.
But sometimes I’ll end up adjusting my upload schedule to accommodate a new post that needs to go up sooner.
For example, I went to a Jesse McCartney concert last year. He’s been one of my favorite artists since I was a kid (I even still have my physical copy of his Beautiful Soul album from 2004), so getting to see him live was a big deal for me. It almost felt like an accomplishment in some way because I finally did the thing. But that night gave me a new perspective about time and how sometimes things can take longer to happen than expected but that doesn’t mean they won’t ever happen, which led me to write a quick little post that in turn bumped down what had been scheduled for that weekend.
I also wrote a post inspired by something Shayne Topp said in a Smosh video and wanted to get that one out within the same week.
It’s also happened where I have written something and have it set to release but decide the material would be better covered in two posts rather than in a single lengthy one. So whatever was intended to go up the week after gets moved to make room and ensure that both halves go up consecutively rather than have the first part go up and have the flow be interpreted by something completely unrelated in the next week.
Another similar circumstance occurs when I have a post scheduled for a date that cannot be moved and I need to work around that, like my annual June Check-In post talking about the progress I’m making with my goals for the year that cannot go out at any other time. As a result, a post may be delayed for several weeks.
I typically don’t have specific dates intended for my uploads but when I do, I have to prioritize them.
Something Suddenly Went Up
The content I’ve written is not the only factor in delaying a blog post.
I might move a post a few weeks down if I see that another creator has released material on the same topic around the same time.
I am very unknown in the blogosphere and don’t want to make it sound like I have hundreds of views every week, but I don’t want to run the risk of being accused of copying someone with a larger following.
Even though coincidences cannot be helped, I don’t want to give the impression that I write my articles by stealing another person’s ideas, so I may decide it would be wiser to hold off for a bit.
It’s Not The Time
While things going around social media or on the news can inspire a post like this opinion piece, there have been instances where I’ll write an article and have it set to go, only to see something that gives me a legitimate cause to rework it or wait to share it, if not scrap it altogether.
One example of this is a post I had written in late February that was set to go up towards the end of March which broke down some of the reasons I am not interested in pursuing a career in teaching as is often assumed by people upon hearing about my writing and having majored in English while in college. While I was excited about this article because it let me get some things off my chest and attempt to put an end to questions I get asked way too often, the date I had scheduled the upload for was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At this time, teachers worldwide were suddenly having to adapt to new and unprecedented methods of teaching their classes from home.
Needless to say, my releasing a post about why I don’t want to become a teacher would have been inappropriate, so I held off and moved it to a tentative date this autumn depending on how the worldwide health situation evolves and hopefully improves.
It’s Not Ready
This can happen when I decide an article needs more polishing because of realizations I’ve had after reading it a while after having written it.
The post itself might feel unfinished to me upon a second glance, so I might hold off to give myself a little more time to expand on the subject, maybe to do one more round of edits or double-check my research because I’m not 100% confident in my reporting of the facts.
It might also be that I’ve decided to write about a topic that is still pretty new and information is lacking. I don’t want to be that person who writes something up only to find out I misunderstood a significant piece of the puzzle or misinterpreted a situation that has me releasing a correction in the following week. Having worked as a copy editor on the student newspaper in college, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen and the ensuing scramble of trying to make up for the error after the fact is not fun.
I’m Not Ready
Sometimes I move an article because I don’t feel it’s ready for the world to read. But there have been occasions where I have postponed a topic because I don’t feel that I’m ready for it to be out there.
One of the topics I keep going back to is the cathartic aspect of writing through grief.
If you didn’t know, my father died in December 2014. I was eighteen then and it was about two weeks before my first-ever college finals. It came out of nowhere.
It’s something I still struggle to talk about, especially in its relation to my writing. Certain scenes I’ve written have become associated with him and that point in my life, especially one I wrote the night before it happened (in which one of my protagonists learns of her own father’s death, but I’m not going to be getting into that right now).
While I’m okay with working on those scenes now, it took me a good amount of time before I was really able to sit down and focus on them rather than just giving them a cursory glance and moving on. Those are the weakest chapters because I haven’t been able to give them the attention they need. Because I can’t. Even once I do publish that book, I wouldn’t be surprised if I found myself questioning their readiness and whether or not they were the best they could have been.
Talking about them in relation to my own experiences is more of a challenge so, as you might expect, writing a blog post about it is not easy for me.
I have a few drafts in WordPress about this subject, but I find myself getting anxious or uneasy whenever I approach it.
I don’t want to say I will never talk about this topic. Grief is important to discuss even though it rarely is in the capacity it ought to be. It’s awkward in some ways because we may not be able to talk about it or know how to. I want to, but I know I’m not ready to yet. The significance of the topic also has me holding off because I know I want to make sure I do it justice, so I’m waiting until I feel like I am at a point where I can get it right.
So that’s a bit of a behind-the-scenes glance at my blogging process for you. Most of the time, my articles go up when I plan for them to, but there’s always the chance that they don’t.
If I mention an upcoming post on social media and you don’t see it on the site as expected, it might be because of one of these highlighted reasons.
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