As the year starts to come to an end I am thinking forward to the new year. How will I approach blogging this time?

Last year I started off with the intention of dialling back. It didn’t work out that way. As I watched my stats dwindling in the first month I couldn’t take it. I started doing the daily prompt and when that suddenly stopped I started my own. I ended up beating last years figures by September and I have had by far the best year since I started.

But at what cost?

I mean why? It took a lot of effort to get there – and in the end, it was my obsession with the stats that drove it.  When I first started blogging it was a personal thing, it then developed into a way of keeping my writing habit. This then got me back into producing a book, a collection of poetry and another of short stories.

Then my blog became – at least partly – a way to promote these and try and get some sales.

That has not worked. Probably because I was not really concentrating fully on that and was obsessed with increasing my stats day in day.

The problem is with a full-time job and a family – including some special needs demands – I get very little spare time, seemingly less and less as time goes on. The result has been that ALL of it has gone on blogging. The writing, the networking, the scheduling. Which means I have done nothing else. No other writing.

So, as reluctant as I am I think its time to take a break – maybe for a whole year. And use my spare (sparse) time to do some more meaningful writing. Produce some more actual books. Enter some competitions. Move towards becoming a real writer. Blogging has become a distraction from that instead of an enabler.

You all might hear from me now and then. I will maybe post once a week to keep the blog alive. And, if I do publish anything near I will need somewhere to announce it.

I have met some wonderful people in the blogosphere – and its the only real source of support and encouragement I get in my writing world. But maybe that’s also what has kept me here.

So it’s not goodbye but I will be quieter come the new year.

I wish every the best in their own blogging 🙂