What’s wrong?

I started my blog several years ago, and as with all things, there have been ups and there have been downs, but how fortunate I am that there have been so many more, so many, many more ups than downs!

The biggest ‘up’ is all the people I have ‘met’ through reading what others have written, and of course, other people  reading what I have written… my eyes have been opened to so many different things on every subject imaginable.

The other biggest ‘up’ is a selfish one – it’s the writing I have shared here. I’ve always written, but looking back my writing has been quite narrow – stories, novels, writing for work, writing for the students I taught. Here, I’ve had to learn a whole range of different writing skills – thinking in a much more focused way about audience. Recently I have returned to the writing of my childhood – writing poetry! Writing here means I get feed back, comments, and some criticism and I am so grateful to all who have taken the trouble!

Linked to the above, I have learned so much here about writing my family history, and exploring different ways to tell stories from the past, including creative non-fiction – which I learned about by reading others’ blogs!

Writing here has become part of my life – as well as reading and sharing others’ stories.

So what about the ‘downs’? I guess the main one is that when I look back at things I have written and realise they weren’t very good, or have careless errors… There are certain words I just can’t spell properly and even with spell-check sometimes the incorrect version slips through, for example, sieve, weird, focused…  In the early days of blogging when I didn’t really know what I was doing, or where I was going, or who I was addressing and hadn’t found my voice, I did put out some posts which I wouldn’t do now – nothing controversial, just not very good!

Another ‘down’ is looking at how many people have liked and read me. I got very excited as the audience crept up – I didn’t try and write to that, or try and focus on a particular topic or subject, but I did feel pleased with myself.

Over the years I’ve been writing, my ‘viewing figures’ have steadily climbed; ok, sometimes there was an odd slump and usually I could put that down to it being a special day, or a holiday, or I hadn’t written much, but in general my readers bobbed along.

Early this year I began to see a slightly higher increase in figures – which was very pleasing, as I do work hard at this.

Suddenly, about five or six weeks ago, my figures plummeted – dropped shockingly low… I was aghast… what had happened? Was there something wrong with WordPress? Worse still was there something wrong with me and my writing?

From having hundred plus, I dropped to having ten plus… Maybe it was just a blip? Maybe it was just one of those things? I was shocked, anxious, worried… and disappointed… and increasingly saddened by it…

I have no idea what has caused it, but I keep on writing, I keep on blogging…

The blogosphere is a strange place, and really, I am only an amateur!

If you want to see what else I have written, here is a link to my books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lois+elsden