This is my 100th post!

Oh my gosh. I've never stuck with anything this long in my whole life! Unless you count cadets. or band. But right now, this feels bigger than all of that! It’s been a real blast doing this, and I’m really excited for the next 100 posts to just fly by.

Since it’s a big day for me, blog-wise, I decided to tackle a question that I get asked with some frequency, but haven’t ever addressed, and that is how I schedule out, or find time, to blog. I do have a system, but it’s not nearly as complicated as you’d think.

First, I have a little notebook (it’s identical to a moleskine, except I bought mine at the dollar store) that I keep on me at all times. I have it next to me now, and when I go out, it gets tossed in my purse. On the page is a list of dates, and next to them is the topic of the blog for that day. For instance, halfway down the page, it says July 16, and then has 100 ^th Post written next to it. I like to decide the topic of the post as far ahead in advance as possible, at least a week or two if I can manage. This allows me to put as much thought asI can into what I want to say or do that day. I also (and I hope that nobody is too scandalised by this) do as much writing as possible before the day the post goes up. I tend to be very indecisive about my words, so I like to write a draft of the post that week in advance, and then edit it up to and including the night before it is scheduled. Blogger is really good about this because you can schedule when you want your draft to be published, so I can edit it all I want, and it will still get out on time. This also gives me that time to sleep on it, and think over my words.

In addition, if I can write a post and be happy with it in advance, I’m good with that too. Most of my reviews (again, I hope that no one is horrified that I pre-write most of my pieces) and certainly my book of the week is all prewritten. As soon as I finish a book, I write the post on it and file it away. Don’t worry, I still have been reading one book each week. It’s not like I’ve done ten in advance. It’s just about the same for the reviews. As soon as I know that I like something enough to do a post on it (and trust me, I would never positively review something that I didn’t like), I type it up, and set it to be published on the day I’ve picked for it, even if that day is two weeks from now.

Because of this extensive pre-planning and pre-writing, I’m usually relatively prepared for about six days in advance of any given time. It also helps that I set aside one hour of solid blogging time every day. I’m the kind of person who has to multitask or I get bored, so I usually will turn on a movie or TV show for background noise, sometimes music, and will start typing. An hour later, I let myself take breaks, and do more if I want to, but by then, I’ve usually accomplished whatever I’d like to. If an hour seems like a long time, it’s really not. Sometimes I’ll set up supper, and then put it in the oven to cook, and blog then, or I’ll sacrifice an afternoon nap for a blog post. You’d be amazed where all those minutes can come from. I also don’t like to pick a specific time of the day, because I work on shifts, currently, so my schedule is really all over the place. Once it becomes school time, things may be a little more concrete. Until then, though, this works for me.

I like this system because it gives me a lot of leeway on what I plan on doing. If I suddenly need to rearrange the schedule because a time-sensitive topic has caught my attention, it’s not that hard to give the days a shuffle, because I can swap out days pretty quickly. It gives you guys something every day without giving me a headache every day. It also means that if I ever get swamped with work, or school, or catch the flu and am out for a couple of days, the posts will keep rolling without me having to worry about it. Blogger also makes it really easy to keep track of views and individual performance of each post. That being said, I'll still have days when I'm pulling zero views, and that's fine. it's not idea, but I'm just starting out, so it doesn't bother me.

That’s all I really have to say…except one more huge THANK YOU for reading.  :D Do you have a blog? How do you maintain steady posts? If you give me the link to your blog,  I promise I’ll check it out. :)