This post may be a bit rambly and not make a lot of sense, but hopefully it does to those of you who blog on here. I feel like I’m kind of at a creative standstill with my blog right now and not sure what to do next with it.
When I started this blog about a year ago, I didn’t have a plan for what I wanted to write about or anything. I just needed a place to vent my feelings, really. I started writing about things in my personal life, but that gradually shifted towards some of my hobbies and interests, particularly anime and manga… and now, that’s the main thing I write about.
And that’s great! I love my little blogging community and it makes me happy to read everyone’s posts, share our opinions, and get to know each other better. But lately I’ve been thinking, what else do I want to do with this blog? Do I want to do what’s worked for me so far, or do I want to try something new?
Because to be honest, I haven’t had been as motivated to watch and write about anime as I was even a few months ago. I still watch older series from time to time, but outside of My Hero Academia, I haven’t caught up with much new stuff lately. This is partly because I’ve been busy with you know, life, but I also have had a hard time keeping up with so many new releases and also catching up on all the stuff that I missed. Even the shows I really want to watch have been put on the backburner, because adding any more to my overstuffed backlog would be overwhelming!
Beyond the lack of motivation to watch stuff to write about, I’ve had a hard time deciding what I want to write about and how I want to write about it. I’ve thought about deviating a bit and writing some posts about other things: music, video games, stuff about mental health and LGBTQ+ identity… but I also don’t want this blog to be an unfocused mess or miss out on the awesome anime theme I’ve worked on for a while now. I’ve even thought about starting a different blog entirely, so I can write about more personal stuff, but running 2 blogs at once just seems… eh…
Most of the posts I’ve enjoyed writing the most are the really in-depth ones, like my character and trope analyses or (my personal favorite) my Overly Long and Passionate Defense of Re:Zero. But those take a lot of time and energy for me to write, and I’m concerned their length might be a problem for some readers. Of course, I could just write shorter/less detailed posts, which are fun for me every once in a while, but I kinda feel like the more in depth stuff is what makes my writing stand out. How can I find a balance?
To be fair, I’m not the kind of person who worries too much about likes and followers and all that. (If I did, I’d have a YouTube channel and every post would be something stupid like Top 10 Finest Butts in Anime!) But I also want all of my posts to be good, and enjoyable for people to read. I’m an only child so I have a pathological fear of doing poorly on anything.
So I guess I’d like some advice, if you’re reading this and you have a blog yourself. What do you do when you feel these kind of creative blocks and you don’t know where to go next? Do you like the kind of posts I’m doing, or would you like me to branch out into other stuff? And what kind of posts of mine do you prefer, if any? I would really appreciate any and all feedback, and thanks and I hope y’all have a wonderful day. ❤
Starting Life From Zero 
My blog lacks focus and I’m fine with that. If anything, I use my blog as a mental scratch pad.
It started with anime but by now it is all over the place. YMMV, but I don’t think life needs to be ordered or focused or even suitable for general audiences. It just needs to be real. Ditto blogs.
I rather appreciate the diversity of my followers. I have nudists and anime fans but also science/math people and ordinary housewives and outdoors lovers and artists and others.
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I guess I’m not sure what to say really because I always had my focus on anime and other things of that sort when starting even if I didn’t know how I wanted to handle it yet. I’ve tried breaking out of that mold a few times, but it really hasn’t worked.
It also took me a long time to just figure out what I wanted to write specifically and how to write it. So yeah, it all takes a lot of time and energy to figure out.
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I blog whenever the mood strikes. Sometimes that’s less than once a month, sometimes 10 posts in a week. Some of my favourite bloggers have given up because they felt the pressure of posting regularly was too much – sort of a blogging burnout. I’m one of those people who prefer quality over quantity, and I have stopped following some very good writers because they post too many posts that seem like they were created for no other reason than to fill some self-imposed quota.
As to whether to make a blog a single purpose one (e.g. anime) that’s up to you. One reason I started mine was to express what I can’t do face to face, and like Fred (Au Natural) above mine is also something of a mixture of mental scratchpad and sounding board. It works for me. But whatever you do, don’t make blogging into a chore. Enjoy it.
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Have you thought about trying a 30 day anime challenge or something similar. Having a structure telling you what to write about may free yourself from your thoughts. Obviously, you don’t have to do it in 30 days, but just take the prompts.
If you’re worried about length, then maybe break up a longer analysis piece into a series of posts. Try to focus on one thing in each post but have it so that all work towards you overall idea.
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Do you think it’s a creative block, or are you have a feeling you want to change something but aren’t sure what?
YMMV, but every time I’ve tried a mammoth change, I’ve fallen on my face. I’ve since gotten the idea that making incremental changes from something you like to something you like better works better.
You said you’re worried about your posts being too long — even the Re:ZERO defense (which I loved, BTW). It might be helpful to ask “too long in what context?”
Did you enjoy writing it?
Did enough of your readers enjoy reading it? Obviously, we’ll never please every reader every time, but is that even a goal?
I encourage folks (that includes me, too!) to try to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your blog. If it’s random stuff, cool! Post random stuff. But I think doing it deliberately will help you be more successful.
Which depends on how you define success!
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It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy writing these kinds of longer posts, it’s that they take almost an entire day for me to write. It just takes too much time and energy for me to do them while still trying to make my (self-imposed) goal of pumping out 2 posts a week. Maybe I should just scale back to 1 post a week so I can spend more time on them? Idk
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i’ve blogged for five years and dealt with this less creativity and where do I go phase, haha it never gets easier. I’ve gone through so many changes and when I hit a wall I rewatch or reread some of my favourite anime or manga. Going back to old roots always is the best. here is an old post I did on writers block for someone else that was going through it while back. maybe this might help 🙂
https://litakinoanimecorner.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/undoing-the-peril-of-not-wanting-write/
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