Hello and welcome back to my blog!
Today I’m joining on on Bookending Spring, an event hosted by Clo @ Book Dragons and Sam @ Fictionally Sam. This seasonal event brings together the book community to talk about all things spring cleaning/organizing—be it your blog, your bookish life, or anything at all. For more info, check out Sam’s announcement post.
Today’s post is inspired by Jayati @ It’s Just a Coffee Addicted Bibliophile’s post Pre-Scheduling and Organizing Your Blog ft. Mood Blogging.
In case you weren’t already aware, I’m a bit of a Type A personality. It’s something I came by naturally: both my parents are extremely neat and organized, and that’s just how I grew up. Being organized has been extremely helpful throughout my life, both in school and as a writer. I’m really great at making a plan…the problem is, I tend to really guilt myself when I fall short of my goals.
Which is what inspired my take on this prompt: Is scheduling my blog posts ahead of time productive, or overkill? How can I manage to stay organized while not being drowned in dreaded blogging guilt?
Let’s take a look at how I currently keep up with blog planning.
To start with, I use Scrivener for almost everything related to writing, whether it’s fiction or blog posts. If you’re not familiar, this is an app that lets you create folders upon folders of mini-docs within one giant document. I love using Scrivener for blogging, because it lets me create folders for each type of post I do. I also have mini-documents for my TBR, books I’ve read, and, most importantly, a section where I plan out my blog.
Currently, my goal is to have posts scheduled out ahead by about a week. What this means is that on Sundays, I try to have all my posts up and ready to go through the next Sunday. I try to draft posts two weeks ahead of time, that way they have time to simmer and grow through the editing process.
What ends up happening, though, is that I fall behind on drafting posts ahead of time—and then I become swallowed by guilt.
The Pros of Planning Ahead
• I can plan out my week based on my work schedule and pencil in time to blog when I know I’ll have free time
• I don’t have to panic about needing to have a post go up the night before
• I can be consistent, which is important for stats (or so they say)
• Whenever life threatens to get in the way, I always have a week of buffer between me and a missed post
• I don’t have to worry about my blog every single day of the week
• I have more time to focus on blog hopping
The Cons of Planning Ahead
• When I get behind, I have to draft a whole week of posts in one sitting, which is really draining and probably affects the quality of my posts
• I’m always slightly delayed when it comes to jumping on blogging trends, because I plan my posts so far in advance
• When I fall short of goals, I feel awful, which isn’t conducive to blogging
• Blogging starts to feel more like work and less like fun, because I’m sticking to such strict expectations for myself
To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a planner.
It’s so ingrained in my personality, and it mostly does bring me a lot of comfort. Throughout the week, when I have busy days in other aspects of my life, I don’t have to stress that my blog will be okay without me there, watching over its shoulder. I feel better about my posts when they’ve had time to sit for at least a day before I read them over, edit them, and post them. I feel confident in my consistency.
That being said, I definitely need to work on my guilt complex. Blogging is, ultimately, a hobby. Granted, it’s a hobby that requires a lot of time and work. But ultimately, it’s an act of creating something for myself and hopefully others to enjoy. If I’m not enjoying the posts I’m writing, how can I expect people to enjoy reading them?
If I want to enjoy blogging, I might have to let go a little bit. Whether it’s forgiving myself when I get behind on reviews, or letting go of the need to draft posts out so far in advance. If I really want to have fun with my blog, I’m going to have to learn to live a little.
Do you schedule your blog in advance? What’s your favorite method for staying organized with blogging? Are you participating in Bookending Spring? Let me know in the comments!
lady gets lit 
This. Is. ME. Christine I can relate to this post a whole lot. I also love to plan things out and I’m always planning a week ahead on my blog posts, but… well, sometimes I have more to do when I have other things planned and don’t have my usual time-frame free to prepare my weekend blog posts, sometimes I just feel like I have to do more to catch up on things, but then… well it’s overwhelming and sometimes I can’t schedule everything either. I just want to print out the last paragraph of your blog post right here and frame it to see it right every single time I’m working on my blog. I adore what I do and I’m having so, so much fun, but sometimes… well, when you’re used to scheduling everything and suddenly can’t manage to schedule it all, it’s so frustrating. But it’s so important to let it go at times, too.
I love this so much. Thank you for sharing! ❤
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Gaaaah this comment made me smile so much! It means a lot to know that I’m not alone or weird for feeling unnecessary guilt when it comes to keeping up with my blog. I actually took a week off of reading AND blogging… and it was scary at first, but it helped me realize that I have to be the one to set my own pace with blogging. I can’t go by everyone else’s rules, because we all have different lives and obligations outside of the book community. Sometimes we get behind, but it’s important to remember that nobody else notices when we’re behind on scheduling, or when we have to move an important discussion post back a week because we’re just not in the mood to write about it. Our readers show up when we show up, and they aren’t counting how many posts we’ve written or whether or not they’re flawlessly organized or whatever. All that matters is what we decide to put into it.
Thank you so much for all your kind thoughts and support and encouragement. You’re such an inspiration and it’s so nice to know that you have similar struggles ❤ we're not alone!
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Oh this makes me so happy to hear, you’re definitely not alone in this and always here to chat if you want to, always! ❤
I agree. It's so hard to… sometimes, take a break but it's so important as well to know what we can and can't do and what our pace is like, too 🙂
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Aaaah I love this post so much Christine! Scheduling ahead was once coupled with crippling guilt when I fell behind, now I’m at the point where I plan loosely what I want to get posted in a month. I batch write posts as best as I can, so I can batch format/schedule later. I try and do things in batches, but I originally tried having a really rigid posting schedule. Thinking it’d work. It didn’t due to me not doing well under pressure and I can self impose deadlines for toffee. If I’m not in the mood to do something, it won’t get done. So I flopped at a rigid schedule, I either got eaten by guilt or stress. Neither are great. Now though I’ve learned that in order to be on top of things, I need a loose schedule, which still allows me to be flexible with my posts. My BuJo is amazing for this, so far it’s helped me a lot. Rigid schedules aren’t for everyone, hell scheduling in advance isn’t for all of us, but we have to learn when to let go of our plans and let things flow a little I think!
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I really like your idea of having a loose schedule! I tend to move posts around a lot in my Scrinever planning section, so obviously nothing I plan out is really set in stone. It definitely is more important to me that I have a bunch of ideas ready to go than it is to know exactly when I’m going to post things. I’m always worried I’ll run out of things to talk about, somehow? It hasn’t happened yet, but when it does I’m determined to embrace it. I’m definitely going to keep your tips in mind going forward. Thanks for stopping by and I’m so glad you enjoyed this post ❤
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I kinda do a half-hearted schedule. Like, I’ll take a calendar and mark all the days that I want to post on, and I’ll mention if they are for reviews, or a discussion that’s already written, but most other boxes get a generic “Discussion post” or “Tag” instead. Then about a week beforehand Chana and I figure out what exactly we’re posting there, and write the post if we need to. It helps us not forget to post, and also can be useful when we need to plan around schoolwork, but the posts are never all written out beforehand. But I think I like the freedom of writing whatever, and being flexible about what gets posted when! I don’t know if I’d be able to handle a rigid schedule.
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Wow, I actually really love this concept! It’s the best of both worlds: you don’t forget to do posts when you intend to, so you keep the consistency, but you get to write about whatever you’re in the mood to write about! I may have to put this into practice for myself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! ❤
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