It’s the first Wednesday of April, which means it’s time to raise our insecurity flags and let them be torn from our fingers to go where the wind takes them. Together, we can release those pitiful pennants of doubt and self-consciousness, always trying to keep us from getting our writing out into the world. BACK, BLISTERING BANNERS OF INSECURITY. BACK, WE SAY.

If you’d like to sign up for the group yourself, you can click here and be welcomed. As always we have wonderful co-hosts to thank for keeping us on track every month. For April, we thank  Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia!

The optional question for this month is an interesting one I would love to answer. It is: How long have you been blogging? What do you like about it and how has it changed?

I did have to trawl back through my old posts from when I had the free WordPress.com option and there I found much to love, along with the date of my first posting. I’ve been blogging as SE White author since November, 2016, and that means I’ve given almost 8 years of my life up to the wildly flapping butterflies which coalesce to make up my (incredibly ornery) muse.

Actual footage of my story ideas all attacking me at once

The best part about blogging, and the part which has not changed, is how helpful and supportive and downright generous other bloggers can be. Do one quick Google search on “blogging” or “starting a blog” and literal millions of results will come in for you, each one free and each one with nuggets of wisdom lavishly spread upon the ground for you to pick up.

Add in the specific niche you belong to, such as bookbloggers or author life bloggers, and you have just stumbled into a network of pure, selfless support. I’ve said it many times, and I will go on saying that authors are the most openhanded, giving type persons on the internet. And the internet can otherwise be a dark and scary place, with comment sections that feel like outright war. Can I just repeat again how much I really appreciate this safe, sane little corner we exist in? I appreciate you all SO MUCH.

What I also like about blogging is the ability to be in control of the words and ideas I string along the interwebs in hopes of attracting and entrapping new readers. It’s a platform I kinda sorta mostly control. Always at the mercy of HTML and the coding, of course, thank you internet magicks for your grace and I shall make the usual blood offering in sacrifice this weekend, so mote it be. Blogging is also not dependent on the whims of some multi-billionaire who might, for example, buy up a previously useful platform, dump their personal garbage all over it, and run it into the ground harder than a malfunctioning F-18 (the platform shall not be named, but it does aptly rhyme with *shitter*).

Plus, I get to add gifs whenever I want, wherever I want because this is my blog. I cannot be stopped. I will add ALL the gifs, and you will LIKE it. I feel like this is an underappreciated part of blogging.