This July marks the 5-year anniversary of my blog and 7-year anniversary of my writing journey. So, I guess it’s time for a small retrospective and reflection.

To start with the older anniversary – my writing journey began on 21.7.2015 – and it always seems impossible to have been such a long time. As much as I couldn’t imagine even giving writing a try before, it’s been with me almost a quarter of my life already – something that’s hard to believe. And, given that I have a fair amount of ideas, it’s likely to stay with me for quite a while.

After years of trial and error, I dare to say that I’ve developed a nice base of skills, though there’s still a lot to improve. Especially the finer points of writing. If my beta readers are right, then I am improving, though it’s always hard to see for myself – writer’s doubt is an ever-present companion on my journey, and I don’t think it’ll ever go away completely.

There’s also still a lot to improve mechanically – while I hoped that I’ll be writing faster with experience, my progress isn’t much faster. I still haven’t managed to control my creativity so my work is still in bursts, riding waves of inspiration when they hit and struggling when they’re gone, though I try to use these moments to edit. I’ve been also trying to get into other forms of creativity – such as making simple sketches to help me visualize characters better.

My fifth “bloggiversary” is a direct result of my writing attempts. In July 2017, two years into my writing journey, the first book had reached a stage when the rough story was complete and I was, by that point, making peace with the decision that I may, eventually, share it with the world. I’ve come to that conclusion after reading a couple of self-published books, a fact I’ve probably mentioned a couple of times.

Anyway, with the question of publishing the book changing from “if” to “when”, I decided I may as well create some internet presence. Since then, I’ve had peaks (to the point of posting three times a week) and valleys (to once per 2-3 weeks). By now, I’m regularly posting every Sunday with extra posts on Wednesday if my life gives me an opportunity.

Over the last years, there are two posts that stand out and still keep gaining some views – my review and guide to the Kindle Create software (from 9/2020) and to the betareader.io writing/feedback webtool (from 9/2019). In fact, I’ve received two or three e-mails from the betareader site that someone had used the refer-a-friend link I’ve provided in the post, which did surprise me.

What the future holds for my blog is hard to guess. I’ve often felt that posting every week seems unsustainable long-term.

During the 5 years, I’ve gained maybe 300 followers – of which maybe 10-20% are genuine, judging by the usual views and interactions. Most of the others are probably bots who hit follow in hopes of the unsuspecting victim visiting their site or following them back, and I tend to do a yearly clean-up of those (usually in Autumn or Winter). After all, most of my interactions are with a small group of 10-15 people who have helped me a lot on my (not only) writing journey and I hope I will, one day, have the chance to help others as well.

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For those who are following my journey since the start, huge respect for still reading whatever word-vomit I produce. But I value every single person who interacts with me in any way. Here’s hoping we’ll still be around in another 5 years.