With blogging, as with anything I try, I picked it up toyed around with the idea for a moment, and jumped right in. Back in January, Problogger, Darren Rowse, offered his ebook / workbook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog at a decent discount. I picked it up, having no idea how overwhelming writing my own book while running Home Ec 101 solo would become.
Since that time, the pdf file lingered on my cluttered desktop, reminding me of money I threw away.
I’ll get to it, really. At least that’s what I’ve been telling the guilt inducing gif.
About a month ago Srini Rao of The Skool of Life and BlogcastFM mentioned he was looking for some partners to work through the program. As there’s nothing like accountability to get my butt in gear, I jumped at the chance. Ami Kim of 40 Days to Change also joined in the project. Aside from the accountability, I thought it would be a great opportunity to work with people outside of my usual circle.
There’s always room for improvement, right? Not every day is going to be relevant to my work on Home Ec 101 and some days are skills and tips I’ve already put into practice over the years. The project will still help me find areas I need to strengthen. My goal isn’t to turn Home Ec 101 into a cookie cutter site, rather it’s an exercise to determine where I need to focus.
Here’s the rundown of my first week with the project.
Day 1 – Elevator pitch
I worked on this a few months ago when I redesigned the header of the site. While “What you wish your mama taught you” captures the essence of what I’ve been doing, I feel like a fool saying it out loud. After mulling it over I came up with Real skills for real people with real lives. Repetitive? Of course, it emphasizes that I want Home Ec 101 to stay grounded and focus on people who have to worry about their budgets and can’t spend $14 lb on Wild Alaskan Salmon twice a week. Those people have Martha and those people can have set designers and food artists. I’ll continue to do the best I can with what is available.
Day 2 – Write a List Post
I write list posts all the time, I had a little fun with this one. There’s some twisted part of me that enjoys working in random geek culture references wherever possible. Let’s face it, home economics is not the most riveting of topics, if I get bored, I can’t expect anyone else to hang around and read it.
Day 3 – Promote a Post
I’ve installed YOURLS to create a url shortener with the my domain, but I’m having trouble getting it to work. Until that happens I have disabled automatic tweeting of posts upon publishing. Instead I’m doing it manually and trying to maintain that balance of promotion with actual conversation. I enjoy Twitter too much to only use it for self-promotion.
Day4 – Analyze a Top Blog
(or 2, ’cause that’s how I roll)
Did you know Smitten Kitchen and I have similar counters? From there I get a reminder to focus on the technical aspect of good photography. I’m learning. With every meal I learn a little more, even if it does become tedious. I could slow posting to increase interaction in the comments, but I’m not sure that’s a direction I want to take. My site isn’t solely focused on one topic. Perhaps, I should look into better content navigation through subdomains. It’s something I’m rolling around. Lifehacker gives me the urge to jump all in, to go big or go home. It makes me want to bring on more writers, like Brian and grow through pure content creation. Is it doable? Yes, but the workload is hugely intimidating.
Day 5 – Email a Blog Reader
Easy peasy. Definitely a reminder that I need to do this more often. Heck, I just need to be more responsive period.
Day 6 – Learn from Top Bloggers
Excellent reading and a reminder to never stop learning.
There were low points. Can you say strep three times?
How about having the tonsils yanked?
There were amazing highs, flying to New York City and back in a day. Spending three days in New Orleans for Jazz Fest.
Nashville, Asheville, Minnesota, too.
Blissdom, TypeA, CREATESouth, I don’t know that I could have been any busier.
But I was.
In April of 2009, just after CREATESouth I told Dan Conover, that it would be the year of the book, but then Ivy hit bottom and took her leave. She’s 10 months clean and that is worth more than anything, but as her world crumbled. I set the book idea aside, I was just going to dig in and try to make Home Ec 101 work or find out if it was time to let go.
Just before I threw in the towel, I received an email, the one I thought was a scam, only it wasn’t.
Now the book is done, it’s all in my editor’s hands. All I can do is wait. I’ve closed the chapter on writing a book, as well as another year. I have no idea what’s in store, but I can’t wait to see.
We all get a little crotchety, right? A year in the blogworld is 7 years in real life, right? This makes me old and gives me the ability to randomly vent.
There are a few things that immediately turn me off of any website:
Bug-eyed cartoon women – I find them infantalyzing and as I often have a hard enough time being taken seriously. It may be irrational, so be it. Don’t worry if this works for you, there are plenty of people out there who find the drawings cute and endearing. You can’t please everyone.
Auto-play music or video. ‘Nuff Said.
Sparkles, unless they are ironic sparkles.
Content comprised solely of useless memes that require one word answers or no effort.
Participation in memes doesn’t bother me, it just annoys me when there is never any original content. (For the record I love memes where people show off projects, so I’m biased in that regard).
People who take themselves too seriously.
Yes, yes, I’m a hypocrite. Noted.
Blogs that only exist to talk about rebating and couponing. This one is another it’s not you, it’s me.
Slow page loads (I can say that now that I fixed my own. Thanks Jared.
Now #getoffmylawn unless you have a few peeves of your own.
Also, thank you Malia for the inspiration, not for being guilty of the offenses.
The rough draft of the book is done. I still don’t know how I feel about the prospect of actually having the book printed. It scares the pants off me to actually put it out there where it’ll be judged as is.
That said, I sit down to start officially working through the editing on Monday.
I gave a presentation at the Charleston County Library on Thursday, the turnout was light, but I think it went well. The people seemed to have a lot of questions and I believe some of them walked away with useful information.
Other than that, it’s business as usual here. Busy.
Home Ec has had over 1 million unique visits according to Google Analytics. Sure it’s been bumpy, but the general trend looks good to me. I’m hanging on.
I’m on the downhill run, but this one chapter has me stumped and frustrated. It’s a concept that is hard to explain to the general, disposable world public.
Heidi knows I’ve been struggling and sent me this TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. Different tiers, but the same concept. Tonight I’m going to bed early and tomorrow. I’ll show up.
Flashback to the summer of 1994, I went to pick up the schedule for my senior year only to discover the front office had it mis-filed. It wasn’t really their fault, I had skipped my junior year and with thousands of kids in a school, how high should our expectations be? After a stressful couple of hours everything was straightened out and I was placed in the right homeroom and given appropriate senior privileges.
Ever since then, before every major milestone I am plagued with dreams of having to go back and retake my senior year.
The end of the book is in sight, just a few more chapters and I’ll be working on rewrites and edits. Naturally I am spending my nights trying to find my locker, trying to make the kids behave as I take notes, and wondering why we look so old.
When I was a little girl, I used to think that becoming an adult meant the voice in my head would change. I must have read too many coming of age novels, where the phenomenon was stark, always a before and an after. I assumed the essence would change.
Sure the voice is a little wiser, can grok bigger concepts, and has a little more patience and courage, but the old one lurks just underneath.
