Blogs of the Year

There are so many levels upon which the trajectory of 2020 has been full of unexpected diversions and strange surprises, most of them on such a grand scale that it’s easier to discount the little things. Like that I wasn’t sure where Blog School was heading as the year began. I launched Blog School in September 2019 with a self-guided course only, thinking that blogging itself is pretty solitary even IF the point is connection, and so a self-guided courses seemed to kind of make sense. (Maybe also I was lazy?)

But the people wanted more! And so I designed the MAKE THE LEAP program to run in February, my Blogging Spark course condensed into the shortest month. And an absolute DREAM TEAM of writers signed on to be part of it, and it was the best thing ever. I loved it. We had so much fun, and it was so inspiring, and I have never ever loved “work” so much. It wasn’t “work” at all.

I was planning to run the course again in June, but then the whole world went off its rails. Instead of a formal course, I decided put together more of a hang-out. LET’S GET TOGETHER ran in June, just as protests against police brutality and racial violence were taking place around the world, a harrowing and heady time, and it was a lot to process—but the bloggers in our group were doing it, putting the pieces together to make sense of it all, to write their way toward racial justice. It was inspiring and amazing.

And then a small group signed on for another MAKE THE LEAP session in September, and I loved this group just as much—who would have thought it possible? Another fabulous group of writers whose central feedback required was just mainly me shouting, “Yes! Yes! This EXACTLY!! Keep doing it!” It was really, really good.

Some of the blogs that were born or developed out of all this:

• Topaz Literary
• A New Tea Leaf
• Becoming Janine
• DeRollerCoaster
• The Wilderness of This
• Loving a Spouse Who is Living with Dementia
• Beyond Word Count
• Littlewood Art
• Lisa Bradburn at Medium
• Julie Paul’s Blog
• Rhonda Douglas’s Blog

There are more, but I particularly wanted to highlight those which have been updated in the last month or so, those whose writers have discovered the key to blogging success, which is DON’T STOP DOING IT!

Thank you to everybody who has played a part along the way—those of you who read blogs, who’ve participated in my courses, those of you who keep writing, all of you affirming that the future of blogging (still!) is RIGHT NOW.

MAKE THE LEAP is running next in February 2021, and registrations are beginning to come in! Sign up today to claim your spot (and a reminder that three two left! discount spaces are reserved for people who have signed up for my self-guided course already).