Be a better blogger

It isn’t enough that I’ve fallen behind on updating my four blogs, I had to add another.

Now that I will be doing more “professional” book reviews, I wanted to have them all in one place, so all the reviews for books I receive from publishers will be housed at texasbookwoman on blogspot. I’ll add others (from BookCrossing and allconsuming) that I can transform into portfolio-worthy entries.

I’ve spent part of today reworking the writing schedule again, and I prioritized my goals list so that I don’t feel guilty about neglecting some week-to-week. I also worked on decluttering my desk and immediate area so that (hopefully) I can move operations back into the office. Using the old drawers from the husband’s old storage cart to wrangle papers, books, and magazines has helped not only to clear surfaces but to make each task (filng, reviewing, reading/clipping) portable when necessary.

This has probably taken the biggest hit in terms of the overall schedule. Two days in a row this week, I took my son into Austin for storytime. The first was well worth it (in terms of what he got from it), but the second trip was pretty much wasted (his attention span tanked after two songs)-of course it was the one that we drove the furthest for. It is probably just as well that next week is Spring Break, and that the one special event (a signing program) got cancelled. That will help me be here to get the house into better shape and get help from DH with a few things while he’s off between jobs.

I’m also finding that some of my goals just don’t need to be updated every week, so I may switch updating some of them biweekly or monthly.

Another aspect of blogging that I want to be better about is photodocumentation. Ideally, having my own digital camera would make this easier, but there’s no way that will work itself into the budget anytime soon. The best I can do is to either borrow the husband’s or get a disc done when I have my print film developed-this means, of course, that the pictures can’t be included in the original post-but will have to be edited in later (which makes the blog almost more of a scrapbooking endeavor, which is a whole other goal I haven’t added yet).

but I’ve still written more in the past week than I have in the past few months. I’ll continue to keep to the schedule as much as I can in the next few weeks. I’ll be tweaking said schedule after my husband starts his new job.

as far as the blogging is concerned, here it is:

Tales of a Texas Farmwife (daily, spending about 45 minutes)
SU-book review
M-chickens
T-garden
W-sheep
Th-general homestead topics
F-blogroll
Sa-donkey/s

Yahoo 360 (M, W, F, spending about 30 minutes)

LiveJournal (T, Th, Sa, spending 45 minutes, not sure if I will count memes as “writing”)

43Things (daily, updating 3 goals/day)
-these will usually be crossposted to LJ, but may switch relevant ones to other blogs (such as brewing mead to TTXF)

Right now, I have three different sites on which to share:
LiveJournal
Blogspot
Yahoo 360

I haven’t posted anything of significance on any of these lately. The first is one that I use to keep my friends updated with what’s going on in my life. The second, I was inspired to create when a fellow blogging homesteader told me I should have a separate site for my farm. The third, I created so that family could get updates and pictures about my son.

It seems as though I have many opportunities and venues in which to write (add to the above various forums, commenting on news stories, posting book reviews), but I can’t focus in a disciplined manner. If I’m going to make our publishing venture work, then I need to practice my craft, and I need the feedback from other online writers.

As much as I hate it, I think I may have to break down and create a real writing schedule…add it to the rest of the jobs I perform around here.