Created by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, Let’s Talk Bookish is a segment where discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts every Friday.
This week’s prompt: What Truly Makes a Blog Hiatus? (Suggested by Ruby @ Ruby Reads and Reviews)
Prompts: Have you taken a hiatus before? How long was it for, and did you plan/announce it beforehand? What do you think makes a hiatus? Is there a minimum time length that defines one? Do you think it should be announced beforehand?
I’ve taken two hiatuses before: one in 2018, and another in 2020. The first one was due to me feeling down on my luck and not productive and not always writing whatever I wanted to write. I had felt so stuck and trapped inside of my own head, that I’d needed to take a break and step back to figure out what I really wanted. Then in 2020, I took another hiatus to transition my blog content from Google/Blogger to WordPress. It took about a year to get it together and re-launch my blog. I went on hiatus again before because I felt creatively stagnant in the online program I was using, and needed to expand my platform. Bluehost and WordPress were the best platforms for hosting and writing, so I just did it!
It was a learning curve to go from Blogger to WordPress, especially the web-based hosting part. I didn’t know anything about how domains and hosting sites worked. I asked some of my blogging friends who had experience in changing their platforms, or just using WordPress in general, and they were a huge help! It gave me the inspiration to relaunch so I could start writing again.
I used to think that you needed to log off of everything to go on hiatus — social media, blogs, Discord, everything. But I didn’t; I just didn’t write for a good 2 months and stuck to social media. That’s what I do now anyway, and yet I wonder why my content is so inconsistent… I didn’t really gain new connections, but I did gain stronger connections with the people I was already cool with. That’s when I realized that it’s not how much you create, it’s the quality and who is impacted by your work. I’d rather have a few great posts with the most engagement than 100 posts with none.
Visit https://www.patreon.com/poetrybooksya for more exclusive, creative writing and poetry content! Also visit my introductory post on Patreon here.
Some posts include:
- Updates on my debut poetry book, Reality Check
- Blog posts that don’t make the main website
- I’ll write a poem about you!
- Choose topics for me to write about on the blog
Don’t want to support monthly? Check out my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/poetrybooksya
Thanks for reading,
I went on a 4 month hiatus. I didn’t announce it though. I was sick and just didn’t have the energy to write. My followers seems very understanding.
Health comes first. It’s good that your followers were able to understand why you took a break.