The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Feel free to answer all or none of these questions in your response.

 
I'll answer my own questions because I'm cool like that.

I've always wanted To Be A Writer since I was very small. I've written just about everything over the years: fiction, fanfiction, poetry, chants, essays, academic papers, even co-writing a stage play this one time. It's something I enjoy and something I feel I'm really good at.

When I started Sage and Starshine in May 2011 I wanted a way to keep track of my spiritual life. A blog seemed like a good way to stay accountable. At the time I was with ADF and working through the Dedicant Path, which requires a certain number of essays and reflections to complete. As I was a solitary Druid with ADF, blogging seemed like a good way for me to share my religious experience.

I've gone through stages of posting a lot and not posting at all; I've been in a posting kick recently, especially the past few months. I had the dissolution of a long-term relationship at the end of January and blogging has helped me process some of those feelings.

I keep writing for the pageviews. Not even gonna lie. One of the greatest feelings as a writer is to see my work getting out there. As they say in the fanfiction world, comments are my lifeblood. Besides the obvious hubris involved, there's something really nice about knowing my writing touched someone enough for them to link to or click the like button.

I have been thinking about starting a Pagan book review blog and even have it set up, but I'm waffling over actually having a separate blog or making it part of Sage and Starshine or... so many decisions and possibilities.

What blogs do you currently run?

- Psionics blog, inactive (awaiting activity, maybe) with lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences
- Fiction blogs that are basically online dream boards or online scrapbooks and drafts/notes of novels I have in mind, private, and as many of them as I have muses that I take seriously, which is about...5, rarely updated, and I wondered if I wasn't writing about what I would one day be writing more than actually writing
- General writing about writing blog
- Culinary blog, got really excited about it month before last but I think that's waning
- Nonlucid dreams blog, bit patchy but relatively steady
- Tarot readings and daily draws blog

Have you been thinking of creating other blogs?

I really want to consolidate my belief system into some sort of grimoire already, but the words and concepts keep very, very slightly changing.

I've also returned to paper when it comes to the philosophical pseudo-Jungian analysis of stories, because they might be a bore for other people, but at the same time I keep thinking that the epiphanies that I've come to might help other people if they've helped me so much.

I'd also one day like to run a fandom blog, but...I don't know. I write fanfiction over stuff that I'm over-the-moon about (rarely completed, even more rarely posted anywhere); and I can talk about it with other geeks of the source material, but fandoms just aren't usually blog-shaped to me.

I've also been wondering about starting a vlog. Skits, cartoons, songs, reviews, how-to's...

Why did you decide to start blogging?

I grew up in a family of writers, so even though I wanted to be a scientist (any kind of scientist, really, all science sounded cool to me), writing was around and I didn't even notice that it was a hobby or something that stressed me out to hone because I had this nascent knowledge of all the bad, wrong ways that writing could go.

At grade school my teacher made us all keep journals, and I kept on with the practice even after I left and liked that it would be more private and less structured. Not private enough, though, nothing bad happened but I just thought I'd like it to just be pure data...so I went to blogs because I knew how to clear cookies and think up of passwords that not even I could figure out if I forgot them.

In a strange way, I also thought of these preciously private blogs as proto-social networking, so I happily kept my Livejournal until I realized that my friends and family who I'd give the URL to would actually read it, and then I'd get the writer's equivalent of stage fright and not be able to update anymore. Not even as a private entry. So, I guess I had developed some strange proxy page oscillating attachment style where I was like, "Pay attention to me! Don't look, I'm a monster! Validate my existence! Now I disappear."

...So, your answer sounded pretty similar to mine, except that I don't write for page views. I might write for reference, and I might link it, but my view of page views swings between apathetic and anxious, which is why I don't link it in my signature (anymore).

Mostly, it's privacy and ease of organization...and, now, the multimedia aspects in case I decide to illustrate a feature, or photograph something relevant, or just talk into a voice recorder instead and keep the file online somewhere close to its context.

What made you decide to keep blogging?

I wish I knew. I'm very prone to dedicating hours to hammering out entries, and then looking back on it all, deciding it's junk, and deleting them.

When I was on a psionic path, that was less emotive and more methodical, so that was the first blog that I kept and kept on keeping because I felt there was some purpose to it, which was basically data collection. Or, maybe it was that I had an idea of standards or structures first and just had to fill it as life happened.

Really, though, it's not always exactly a decision. I kind of toe the line between how I liked to write and how I need to write so much that I've got longhand notepads filled with "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs" written in them over and over, which makes no sense to do because those are typing exercises.

On discussion forums, I should hope, and in storytelling well I write if I have something to say. Some of my blogs might just be another outlet for my habit-need to...just...type something. And maybe that's what keeps me going with them.

It's actually sort of strange sometimes, like, I think blogging is about self-expression and then it becomes about communication with a community, which I think of as different things but they combine in a lot of different ways that I usually don't feel like I can keep on top of but can't resist surfing on it anyway because it's not completely awful. I learn new things and meet interesting people.

But data consolidation reference is probably the main thing that keeps me blogging.

I really want to consolidate my belief system into some sort of grimoire already, but the words and concepts keep very, very slightly changing.

The great thing about digital writing (as opposed to an IRL Book of Shadows or whatever) is that it's really easy to edit and change things around. I know a few folks who have made their blogs into a growing, dynamic grimoire/BoS/etc. I know that I find the process of putting together these sorts of work to be just as fascinating as the final product itself.

I've also returned to paper when it comes to the philosophical pseudo-Jungian analysis of stories, because they might be a bore for other people, but at the same time I keep thinking that the epiphanies that I've come to might help other people if they've helped me so much.

You'd be surprised what can get an audience. Some of my most personal (and I thought boring) pieces have become my most popular. For example, post #3 in ranking (after the Home/Archive page) is a piece I wrote on menstruation, getting blood drawn, and the Morrigan. Which was just me writing about 'this icky stuff is going on in my life and I'm also working with tM at the moment so here is some quick musings on life.' But apparently there's a market for folks interested in that sort of thing.

Also I've had the recent weird experience of my post being used in a non-Pagan context and attracting tons (relatively speaking) of pageviews. I have a short series of posts called Better Know A Celt, with both posts in this series being my two most popular posts. Recently the Manannan entry was linked in a popular review of some paranormal show that talked about the Celtic underworld. Suddenly I was getting all these hits from entertainment sites and a few from South Korea; every day since then at least one person has at least clicked on my post about Manannan. Go figure, right?

I'd also one day like to run a fandom blog, but...I don't know. I write fanfiction over stuff that I'm over-the-moon about (rarely completed, even more rarely posted anywhere); and I can talk about it with other geeks of the source material, but fandoms just aren't usually blog-shaped to me.

My fandoming isn't really conducive to a blog in this sense either. I mean I have a Tumblr but it doesn't function like my Wordpress blog. I also have an Archive of Our Own account with work up there, but it's not bloggy.

(Also, sorry not to have gone through the rest of your post - I'm at the library on my lunch break and trying to do everything at once.)

What blogs do you currently run?

Currently I have my regular blog, the Little Sea Witch, and my religious path-building blog, MistSeeking.

I also have Red Ink, Black Tea, which is a devotional blog to Djehuty that I haven't updated in a bit. Primarily because I want it to be a resource blog, and I don't have much in the way to offer on that front at the moment.

Have you been thinking of creating other blogs?

I've got one waiting in the wings, actually, for whenever I start selling my weaving online. I've no plans for any others, though- I've learned from years of experience that dividing my interests up onto specific, individual blogs makes me write less.

Why did you decide to start blogging?

In 1997 my dad taught me enough html to code a Sailor Moon fansite (complete with a pink glittery background and animated text) (I was 11) and after about six months of intermittent poking, I learned how to code multiple links onto one image. I was very proud of myself and decided to make a website to store my journal.

What made you decide to keep blogging?

Habit, mostly. When I first started, my father lived 500 or so miles away, and I only got to see him for a week or two during summer vacation- so I would write about my life as a way of keeping him in the loop. I eventually moved my journaling over to LJ, and then to WP, but it always retained the diary-esque recounting of Shit in My Life. It wasn't until high school that I realized it was cathartic, and that going for long periods of time without unloading in writing made me antsy and (more) depressed.

These days? I do appreciate feedback, but I'm lousy about knowing what to say to other people, so I hardly expect anyone to say something to me! I blog to get things out of my head in a coherent fashion- if I can explain them to someone else they've solidified enough to be examined, and having a written record helps me examine, and look back and re-examine. (This tendency is probably the result of having spent half my life in therapy, but it has its uses.)

I'm interested in self-promotion too, as well as building a social media presence - though that last part has fallen by the wayside. (I keep waffling on whether I want to have one singular identity for my writing or to separate the Pagan from the not-so-Pagan parts of things.)

You know, this past semester I took a class on searching for my library science degree and we had to pick a research topic. With Morag helping out as my "client" I started tracking down information on promoting one's work and becoming more involved on social media, all that good stuff. If you're interested I can dig up those results and share them on TC.

 
I would be really interested in this if it's not too much trouble

I'm interested in self-promotion too, as well as building a social media presence - though that last part has fallen by the wayside. (I keep waffling on whether I want to have one singular identity for my writing or to separate the Pagan from the not-so-Pagan parts of things.)

You know, this past semester I took a class on searching for my library science degree and we had to pick a research topic. With Morag helping out as my "client" I started tracking down information on promoting one's work and becoming more involved on social media, all that good stuff. If you're interested I can dig up those results and share them on TC.

[snip]

I've been wanting to do more reviews on all the books and such other TC members have put out. We're really a prolific group and I'd like to see that supported.

I'm also slowly amassing a TC Author Bookshelf in my room. It gives me warm fuzzies.

 
Put me down as another "Hell, yeah!" on wanting to see the results of your research.

And we are dolts if we book-producing Cauldronites don't band together to boost each other's efforts. I was reading something about promoting one's work (in an attempt to give myself a crash course in this stuff I'm so bad at) that mentioned a group of writers forming a cabal of sorts, to amplify each other's voices and help each other out.

I've plugged Morag's work in the Blog of Mythic Proportions, though I'm unaware of any book from her as yet. But I'm saying it officially now: Let's form that cabal.

That sounds like a great idea. Would the cabal be for religious books? Or any books that one of us writes?

 
I would guess that to be most effective, there should be a common focus of interest--which, this being the Cauldron, should probably be books with some pagan connection. A bunch of pagans plugging a romance novel likely won't help anybody reach their target audience (unless the romance is between Isis and Osiris, or somesuch!)

But like I keep admitting, I know squat, so I'm listening for other ideas from you guys.