A Blog Announcement...Or Two

Hello readers!

There isn't a post today but I do have a blog announcement that has been a long time coming, I think. I'm sure a lot of you think that this announcement has to do with the end of the blog and, in a way, you're right...


I've been writing Modern Day Faith for nearly five years (my five year anniversary is coming in October) and as most readers know, this whole thing started as a school project and then turned into something I've come to use as a creative outlet. When I think about how different my life was when I started this blog it blows my mind. I'm a completely different person now and how I see and think about this blog has certainly changed, too. I can't even believe that some of ya'll have been reading it for that long...you made it through some pretty rough times on this blog; 6+ month-long hiatuses, the Sean era, Faith's downward spiral afterward...but I digress.

Back to my announcement:

Last summer, a lot of you may remember that I put a lot of work into the blog to make it more friendly to new readers with the addition of the FAQ and Character Guide pages and some of you may have filled out the survey I made to poll my readers for their feedback. The feedback I received on those surveys was awesome and has helped me get this blog to a level I never would have thought possible when I first started it but I know there's a lot of room for improvement, too.

I think something everyone mentioned in their survey responses was the hiatuses I would take and the inconsistency with posting. My readers have always been great and understanding about my hiatuses and I knew that I could do better on that front. I think posting for the past seven months has been the most consistent for the longest period of time since I started writing this blog nearly five years ago. I've been able to post two posts a week for a fairly long time and we finally made it up to real time in April after not being on real time for, what? A year? So, that's a goal I'm proud of and I hope all of you are enjoying the consistency and lack-of-hiatuses on my part : ).

Anyway...my whole point with this post is to say that about six weeks ago I sat down and looked at the goals I wanted to accomplish with the logistics of the blog I set out for myself a year ago and, for the most part, I've pretty much gotten to where I want to be with those. This left me with time to really analyze what the hell I was doing with Faith's story and I realized how...weird...this writing format is. This isn't a novel with a set beginning, middle, and end. It's sure as hell not a short story. And it's definitely not a simple straight forward one, either. This makes writing in this way incredibly challenging and I think it's a pretty significant factor into why a lot of fictional blogs seem to end after a few months. (This shit is hard to keep up with and it's hard to keep yourself, as an author, engaged in a story that's broken up in this fashion...so I'm giving all my other fictional blogger authors a pat on the back here because I know a few of you read this blog, too)

Up until six weeks ago, I didn't really have a "plan" for the story I wanted to tell on this blog. I began writing it with the intention of fulfilling a class project and that was all. When I decided to continue writing after the class was long over, I sat down and I made a list of things I thought would be fun to write about and, mostly, all of those events have happened (there a few that are still in the process of playing out in the story and I'm excited to watch them all progress). I also sort of knew where I wanted things to go about a year ago but incidentally I completely changed my mind about that and ended up in this weird limbo where the story was progressing spontaneously based on what I felt like doing (like killing off a beloved character just to see what would happen...). Basically, this blog had no set direction or purpose with the story and, as the author of this story, it's kind of embarrassing to admit that to everyone, but, oh well...I'm not a professional writer and I never had a "writing process" established as I wrote posts for Faith's story.

But that's not true anymore.

Six weeks ago, I found myself thinking about Faith's story almost constantly. And I'll be honest, this was surprising. Sometimes this blog is not that fun to write. Sometimes it feels like a weekly obligation I have to get out of the way so I can forget about it and go do other things. Sometimes the story lines I write take a lot out of me and make me unhappy (like the Sean story line which I could barely force myself to re-read when I was making the Character Guide due to how depressing and sad the whole thing was and I wish I could do it all over again and provide you with a better Sean-based story just to soothe some of my own embarrassment about that) or they reflect my mood. A lot of times, writing for the blog is therapeutic for me but it's hard to make myself actually sit down and do it. 

But not six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago I had ideas about Faith's story running through my head almost constantly and one of the biggest reasons for that was because I completely fell in love with a character I had never thought I'd feel such a deep attachment to. I just couldn't seem to get all of the possibilities they bring to the table out of my head. And those ideas gave life to new ones and so on and so forth. So, I found myself sitting down and writing out a timeline for the blog with all of these ideas that I wanted to bring to life. The literal joy I got out of doing this was, honestly, something I'd never felt before when it came to this blog. For the first time, I knew what the overall message of Faith's story would be, I knew what was going to happen to her and why, I knew if she was going to end up with someone or be alone, I even knew how I wanted things to end. And in that moment, I think I found the beginnings of my own writing process...hence the joy. To be fair, the timeline I made is still about 10% unfinished. I know how I want the blog to end...just not quite how to get there. So I'm still working on that small part.

The timeline I made is a long one, so, no, the blog is not about to end. Not even close, actually. I responded to a comment a few weeks ago that was worrying about the end of the blog with "LOL" because, seriously, I had only barely stopped working on that timeline and it was so damn long that these rumors about the blog ending were just hilarious. But, to be clear: the blog is NOT ending, not any time soon, anyway. I just know how it's going to end. For the first time since I started writing Faith's story. At this point, the biggest risk to me not finishing this blog the way I want to is time and whether I will have enough of it to do the story justice the way I want to while also living my life outside of being a secret fictional blog author online.

So, that's my first announcement. I mentioned there were two in the title of this post, so on to the next!

Because of this new found excitement I have felt over the blog (and one character, in particular, who shall remain nameless) and finding a writing process that works for me, you might notice that the quality of posts will be different. This blog, like I said, is a creative outlet for me so I'm going to try and change things up a bit which means the posts may seem somewhat inconsistent (not in posting schedules, calm down!). I want to experiment with my writing more. I want to try out different styles. That doesn't mean you're going to find posts written up in Wingdings font or that there's suddenly going to be magic or vampires in the story or anything but I want to try and make the blog seem less like a 20-something blogger who overshares about her sex life and mental health and take it to a level of storytelling. I want to try different approaches to Faith's story that I've never done before and I'm excited about how those ideas will potentially play out in the future. I may not be able to do this with every post due to my actual life but I am going to try it when I have the time. So, that's just sort of a heads up for everyone that things may seem kind of weird but it would be awesome if ya'll could just go with it as I try to find the style that works for me and how I want to present Faith's story to you.

Alright. The blog will be up and running again on Monday. See ya'll then. I hope none of you had a heart attack because you thought the blog was over.   ; )

-del