My Blogging Manifesto

Since I will hopefully be making big changes to my blog this year, I feel like it's about time that I wrote my blogging manifesto.

From now on, I will:

Put effort into every single one of my posts:

If something that I write is total garbage or a total mess that doesn't make any sense, I won't post it. I do like my posts to have a bit of a rambly feel to them sometimes because that's the way that my brain works, but if something is just unreadable then it's going to fail. I'm also going to take more time to proofread my posts instead of just finishing and clicking 'publish', because some of my posts have typos in them that I haven't picked up on until a week after they've gone live.

Try to stick to my schedule, but not feel guilty when I don't have anything to post:

Running out of ideas sucks, but I don't want to force myself to write something when I have literally nothing to say because what I'll put out will end up being total shit. And it’s okay to not post every single day; it's not the end of the world.

Put life first every single time:

University work does take up quite a lot of my time, but so does running this blog. Whenever I need to focus on work, then I'll push blogging to the side since it will always be waiting for me to come back.

Let myself go:

Because my life becomes consumed by academic writing, it ends up seeping its way into my blog posts, and that just doesn't sound like me at all. I want to develop a writing style that is more quirky, and more "me", but one that is still easy to understand. I've said this a couple of times before, but I still feel like you guys don't fully know me yet, and the best way to show who I really am is through writing.

Interact with other bloggers instead of just staying in my little corner:

Yes, this again! I always complain about how I'm not social enough and don't have very many blogger friends, but this year I am determined to change that. I'm definitely better at replying to tweets that I receive (when i get them), so instead I'm going to tweet other people and form some friendships. Yay!

Comment on new-to-me blogs, and not just the ones in my reader:

My main bad habit with commenting is that I tend to comment on the same blogs over and over again. Instead, I'm going to comment on blogs that are new to me, as well as my favourites. More new friendships!

Write more bookish posts:

I feel like I'm kind of drifting away from being a book blog, and even though I don't exclusively want to blog about books (I kind of never have), I feel like I don't really talk about books enough. There's nothing wrong with wanting to talk about my other interests, but sometimes I get the feeling that those non-bookish posts overshadow my book posts. I would participate in more bookish memes (I was considering participating in Top 10 Tuesday, but Tuesday is my review slot and I already do my own non-bookish top 10 lists, so nah), but I think that two memes is enough for me. A long time ago, my blog schedule was review-meme-review-meme and that's just not good.

Not review every single book that I read:

At the minute, this is my current habit, and it's kind of bugging me. I do try to read as much as I can, but obviously I can't review every single book that I read and then post them on here or even on Goodreads. I may decide to do mini reviews in the future, but we'll see.

Take part in more blogging events:

I love seeing events going on in the blogosphere, and I often want to join in too, but sometimes I just don't know what I could do for them. My main goal for this year is to take part in some events that I find interesting, and just have fun with them. Even if all I can come up with is reviews, that's okay because at least I'm participating.

Remember why I blog:

I still consider myself to be a pretty small blog, so I tend to get hung up over pageviews and comments and stuff like that because my readership has gone down quite a lot since I stopped blogging in September 2013 and then came back in January last year. I still want to work on getting my numbers back up, but I need to remind myself that numbers and stats aren't the reason why I do this. Success doesn't just happen overnight and I need to work at things rather than expecting them to happen.

What's on your blogging manifesto? Do you set guidelines for yourself or do you just go with the flow?