It’s almost my three-year blogoversary!
Since I started this blog, I’ve done a “State of the Blog” post every six months. This is the sixth such post.
One of the key tenets of this blog is an open writing process. I’ve brought that to my serial novel Razor Mountain with development journals, and I bring it to the blogging process with these posts.
Previous Posts
Metrics
- Years blogging: 3
- Total posts: 378
- Total followers: 137
- Monthly views: 555 (average over last 3 months)
The Curve Gets Weird
For quite some time, I’ve seen visitors to the blog increase steadily. There might be a month or two where numbers would drop, but they inevitably kept creeping up. In December of 2022, I saw the biggest peak up to that point, as presumably more people who like to read blogs do so when they have some extra vacation time over the holidays.
After that, the graph got weird. Up and down constantly, and not much growth on average. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe I’ve been posting a little less consistently. Not much, but a little.
I have a few regular readers, but more than half of my usual traffic comes from search, and search traffic seems to be more variable these days. I can see why people who obsess over traffic or try to make money at this would get into all the little intricacies of SEO, keywords, etc. It’s strange to see a change in the pattern and not really understand why.
The End of Razor Mountain
Six months ago, I could just barely see the end of Razor Mountain in the distance. This July, I posted the final chapter.
This felt like a turning point for the blog. I’ve been working on Razor Mountain almost since the beginning. Between the actual episodes and the development journals, it accounts for 171 posts, about 45% of the entire blog.
I was so eager to finish the book, I didn’t think that much about what effect it would have on Words Deferred. Sure, I still have to do revisions, but the reality is that it’s going to be a very different blog, now that I’m not posting so much Razor Mountain.
For now, I plan to continue some of my other regular posts—monthly read reports and general writing topics.
Updated Posting Schedule
One of the great things about writing Razor Mountain was that blogging and writing fiction were intermingled. I could do both at the same time. However, as much as I enjoyed the experiment, I plan to write my next novel in private.
As a result, I can’t continue to dedicate so much time to the blog if I want to keep up with my actual writing. As a result, I plan on cutting back. The fact that I’ve been posting 2-3 times per week for so long is shocking to me, considering how challenging it seemed when I first started.
I’m still committed to posting at least once per week, so it’s not like I’ll be disappearing. I have quite a backlog of topics I’d like to write about.
Next Time
Speaking of cutting back—now that I’ve done six of these on a bi-annual basis, I’ll be switching to once-per-year assessments. I still like having this chance to look back at what I’ve done and think about what’s next, but the blog isn’t young and new anymore, and I don’t feel the need to do it quite so frequently.
The next few months will be a change, but hopefully a good one.
Thanks for reading!
Words Deferred 
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