Rachel over at Confessions of a Book Geek tagged me in this back during Christmas and I have been answering the questions on and off for ages, then the entire thing has just sat in my drafts getten a bit forgotten about... oops? I like getting a bit more personal with you guys but I am awful about thinking up stuff that’s interesting for answers. I’m really quite a boring person.
1. Why did you start blogging?
I can’t really remember, I’ve had to go back to my introduction post to remember my initial motivation. I remember I’d toyed with the idea for a while, but not ever really committed to it because I’m quite shy and I was a bit wary about writing things on the internet for anyone to see. I started it because I was hoping it would help with my reading, giving me an opportunity to voice my opinions on books and write my reviews and potentially help me remember what I’d been reading because I have the worst book amnesia.
2. What’s the story behind your blog’s name?
It’s actually from a quote by Douglas Adams
I love quotes, I always have. I write them in random places, I save word documents with so many of them, and I will always love them.
My biggest challenge in starting my blog was trying to find a blog name and I knew immediately that I needed to turn to my lists of quotes. I looked at quotes about reading, quotes about books and none of them seemed right, and then I saw this quote and loved it. I loved it when I first saw it and I loved it even more when I was looking for my blog name.
3. How many designs have you been through since you started blogging? (Pictures! We demand pictures!)
I can’t really claim to have had many designs, even when things change it’s more I switch out my header and change the layout a bit, no mega changes. I’ve recently switched my header again because I got a bit bored.
I don’t actually have pictures of my blog, is that bad?
4. Have you ever switched blog platforms? What made you move? If you haven’t ever changed…why?
I haven’t ever changed blog platforms, I began my blog on blogger and here I shall stay. I know wordpress has a lot of positive things going for it and self hosting and all that but that costs money and is more than I want for my blog currently. I like blogger, I know some people have had issues with blogger, I know there are plenty of problems with it, but for me it works. I don’t actually write my posts on blogger, I write them somewhere else and post them there. I always make sure I back up regularly and therefore my blog works for me, in the future that may change, but for now I’m happy.
5. How long does it take you to write a post? What’s your postly process like?
It depends, normally it takes an age because I am a major procrastinator. I’d say on average about an hour to write and then there’s editing and adding pictures and those type of things.
When I’m writing a post I’m normally have my general idea of what I’m writing about, be it a review, or a discussion or a TTT post. I start with my general plan, I ramble, I type out my immediate thoughts and I’m generally pretty incoherent. I then go through and organise my thoughts. I make everything make sense and create structure for the post. I end it with adding images, sorting out any hyperlinks. I don’t always read through what I’ve written, so more often that not there are mistakes which I haven’t noticed.
6. Have you ever been super nervous about a post? Why?! What was it?
I used to be nervous about all posts, especially discussion posts. I’m nervous about what people think about my opinion about something. With discussions, writing what you think and your opinions, and generally picking a topic people might care about, there is a risk that someone won’t agree with what you say. Hopefully, that generates an interesting discussion with what people have to say, but it could upset people, and I don’t want to do that.
I’ve gotten less nervous as time has gone on as I’ve come to accept that those visiting my blog will not judge and I’m not really posting anything divisive, but it’s easy to be nervous still.
7. Do you have a blogging schedule?
I used to try, I try to post a Top Ten Tuesday post, then post something of my own on Thursday or Friday and then another posts on the weekend. I try and aim for about three or four posts a week but often that is too much for me to handle. I essentially just try and blog when I can. I feel like I should have a schedule, and I’ve tried to develop one before, but I never remember to schedule my posts so then it all goes a bit wrong from there. If I don’t remember to schedule a post I must then remember to actually post it and often I don’t.
8. Do you tell people In-Real-Life about your blog? Their reactions?
I have never told any in-real-life people about my blog. It’s not so much I’m embarrassed about my blog, it’s more that I’m shy, and the idea of the people that I know being able to see my thoughts on a screen just fills me with dread. I know that wouldn’t care, they would be supportive and happy for me, whilst also teasing me
9. Top ten blogs you read/comment on the most! Go! Go!
I have loads of blogs which I follow, they all appear on my bloglovin’ feed, which I go to daily. I’ll list the blogs I visit most frequently below, but there are so many more that if I haven’t mentioned you it’s simply that I was limited by 10 blogs. I would also like to say that these blogs and the bloggers behind them are probably the ones that have influenced me the most while blogging with my often looking to them for both blogging inspiration and visiting their pages when searching for a new book to read.
I’m sure there are others, I’ve probably missed out one of my favourites, but I hope you’ll understand if I’ve overlooked you.
10. If you could change/improve things about your blog, what would they be?
I would love a new blog design, something clean and pretty like I’ve seen on other blogs. I get mega blog design envy, and I know part of my issue is that I’m silly trying to do it all myself, but I’m just not willing to give money to someone else to design my blog because I wouldn’t know how to explain what I want and I am vaguely capable of doing the basic myself. I guess it’s just a control issue, I may now know what I’m doing but what I do know how to do I’d like to do myself.
I also wish I had a bit more time to blog, I always feel like I have so little time with all my working hours and actually reading things that I never feel like I can put as much time as I would like into my blog. I normally try and spend my weekends writing blog posts, but I can’t always make the time since I want to have a life as well. It’s difficult to be able to make the time I want to be able to so sometimes I feel like I’ve done half a job when posting something as I’ve not checked it before presenting to you all.
I also wish I could review more, I may not get as many comments for reviews, but I wish I was better at writing them at least. Also, more pictures, I would love to post more pictures for you all, but my ability to take pictures is shocking.
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