That Writing Life: Changing the "Voice" of Your Writing

Over the past few months — in large part because I have found myself needing to put more and more time into my "regular" work — I have been spending more time considering what to "do" with my various blogs and web properties... some of which are now approaching 20 years of age.

Twenty Years!

A red leaf on the lawn outside my office window...

If you stop and think about it, that's the equivalent of "the history of the world," in the broader context of the Internet. As I recall, "Denmarkguy" was "born" in 1995 as the name I chose for my very first email account... which I still have!

But let's get back to blogging.

One of my mainstay blogs is about to get an overhaul or makeover — or at least a "Change of Voice," — largely thanks to my efforts here on Steemit, which have served to remind me of the importance of a more personal approach.

What I am getting at here is that this particular blog was originally built mostly around personal experiences within a specific niche (starting in 2002) of psychology, but as time progressed I allowed the "personal" aspect to give way to a more scientific, 3rd person approach. Eventually, the blog's "tone" wandered to a point where I had pretty much written myself completely out of the picture.

Nothing unusual about that. It actually happened to lots of people in the post-Facebook world. "Personal" was for Facebook (and, at one time, MySpace) and blogs became for "serious" business.

More autumn leaves

Whereas that may be good, bad or indifferent... the long and the short of it is that the blog stopped serving me, and simply became a vehicle for transmitting information.

And something was lost, in the process. And I grew tired and bored with it.

I feel pretty sure that this kind of "progression" happens to more than a few niche writers. We get trapped in a pattern of focusing excessively on "writing properly" (as demanded by trends of the moment) and gradually lose sight of why we started writing those blogs, in the first place.

In my case, I was trying to help people dealing with certain psychological issues... usually using my own plight, experiences and coping tools as the primary example. People related because of the human angle, and readership grew and the blog thrived.

But being in the business of writing is never static.

And yet again more fall leaves...

We may talk ourselves into believing that we get to "publish, and then we're done" but that's seldom 100% true. Although our words here on Steemit tend to leave the scene after seven days, it's still a pretty good bet that people will come across them later, even if we never know about it.

And so... I a, starting the process of evaluating those many venues of mine (yes, I HAVE actually actively kept up with as many as 15 blogs at one time!) and taking a hard look at what their intent truly is... and whether they even have a "reason to exist," anymore.

If you're a long-time writer, I'd recommend you do the same, once in a while... just a "review" to check yourself for relevance!

How about YOU? Are you a long-term writer? Or is Steemit your first blogging experience? If you've been at this for a long time, do you conduct periodic reviews of your own process? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 181017 00:32 PDT