Book Blogger Confessions: #2

Hi y'all! Welcome to the new blogger meme I'm co-hosting with my friend Karen at For What It's Worth Reviews. It's time to open up and share (and vent) about our blogging experiences!

Blogging about books is one of the best hobbies ever and it's incredibly rewarding, but it also comes with its own particular challenges and issues, so we want to open up the conversation and talk about the stuff we normally keep to ourselves.

Guidelines: Do not criticize other bloggers or authors in your post or in the comments! We're here to support each other.

All right, then. Let's start confessing! :-) Our current question  is:

For January 16th: Have you ever had reading/blogging slumps? How do you work through them or work around them?

_______________________________

Tiger's answer:

Blogging slumps? Nevah. Reading slumps? Oh, yes.

Let me explain. I blog regularly religiously. I don't have hypergraphia, but I do have a consistent and relentless urge to write. I always want to write my opinions down and have them out on the internets, just for the sake of having a voice and sharing my thoughts, even if very few people read them. Sometimes I think that I'm dedicated to blog writing because I'm avoiding writing a book--it's my way of writing in a detailed, consistent manner without commiting to that book. So no true blogging slumps for me, ever. I always have something I want to say.

Reading slumps happen for me, but I scoot around them by switching genres. When I get tired of YA love triangles involving fallen angels, I stop reading paranormal YA for a while. When I'm worn out from delightful urban fantasy series that jump the shark somewhere around book 5 (and there are a projected 14 books...), I go elsewhere for a few weeks or months.

IMO, one of the troubles with reading slumps in book-blogging is that we're encouraged to find our "niche" and stick to it, and this niche can lead to reading fatigue. So you become the Contemporary YA Girl. The Urban Fantasy Lady. The Literary Fiction Guy. The Historical Romance Blogger. Most blogging advice posts I've seen advocate finding a very specific corner of the book world and consistently blogging about it. In most cases, this is a great idea. You have a clear area of expertise, so publishers know exactly what type of books to send you! Readers know how to find someone who's writing about the precise thing they want to hear about! You develop your own online "brand" and people get to know you better because of it.

And yet...what do you do when you get burned out on your own self-assigned genre? It does happen. And when you get a little weary of the tropes, plots, and themes of your genre, you can hit a long, hard slump. My solution to reading slumps is to blog about many genres. And I recently changed my blog name from "All-Consuming Books" to "All-Consuming Media" to reflect the fact that I review movies, music, and TV shows as well. Farewell, slumps! There's always something new to try. :-)

__________________________________


To participate in the meme:

"If you want to participate just grab our button and include it in your post with a link to either Tiger's All Consuming  Media or For What It's Worth.

 

Join in the meme and link your post up below or leave a comment!

Feel free to suggest future topics you want to see discussed.

Have fun confessing! :-)

This meme will be hosted twice monthly, on 1st and 3rd Mondays. Here are February's two questions if you want to get a head start:

Feb. 6th: Deadlines for reviewing and blogging. Do you set them? How do you keep them? What do you do if you can't meet a deadline?

Feb20th: Social networking with authors: Do you interact on Twitter/Facebook/etc with authors? Does it affect how you review their work or do you look at their books differently because you're on friendly terms with them?