Perhaps this website seems like the epitome of ‘newbie’ to you, but I assure you that it was once a lot more messy, directionless, and unprofessional.
In my year or so of blogging, whether it be before the existence of this website or now during it, I have never stopped improving. This site, for better or worse, is my current star — all aspects of it have only got better and more refined with time. It’s such a satisfying sensation, seeing everything slowly become uniform and the silent rules I set for myself now paying off and becoming second nature.
Mistakes, like typos or the occasionally out of place comma, still creep by. I’m perhaps not as vigilant as I should be when writing, but there was a time when I would clatter out a review, skim it once, then schedule it and never look again.
Writing isn’t everything when it comes to blogging, it’s just the core part. If a blog is a cake, then the writing is the base — the main flavour and appeal — but everything else, like the theme and images, are the accenting features. I suppose that would make them the icing and frosting in this analogy.
Have a look at the images below:
These are/were the featured images for my Five Great Japanese Books Under 200 Pages post. The left was the original one I designed, rather lazily, and was almost going to run with until a week or so before the post went live. The right, whilst not amazing, is still much more interesting and eye-catching. The difference in care and effort is quite obvious.
Over my time running this website, I realised that flat and barren images don’t do much to lure people. The reviews attract the most attention not just because they are reviews, but because they have colourful images with depth and detail.
The older icons for ‘The Blog’ section tended to follow a two-tone approach, like a 1-bit computer display. Deep blue or off-white. That was it. It quickly became hard to make the images interesting and distinguishable, so I dabbled with additional shades of blue here and there, which did help.
Nowadays, the icons are better detailed. I allow background elements, and I keep the trio of blues alongside the off-white backing. They’re still uniform in their presentation, but it also allows them much evoke more liveliness and does a better job of enticing visitors (like you) to click or tap on them.
Perhaps I was so disinterested in putting effort into these images because this particular section of the website only popped into existence as a means of filling the downtime between reviews. Now I write them because I want to, rather than through an obligation to create content.
Blogging isn’t something I could ever do every day, at least not with long-form media like books. I don’t care to stalk authors or read newsletters and information about the hottest new releases. Unless I’m being paid a steady wage, I’m most likely never going to bother reporting on those sorts of topics.
However, despite not blogging or writing every day, I have checked in on The Steady Read almost every day. Even when the website has experienced content droughts, I have lingered in the background to patch out mistakes, rewrite awkward sentences, or fix some categorical issues with older posts. There was also the matter of approving comments and figuring out how much traffic posts were getting.
It’s about endurance more than anything, and that has been something this website has given me. I paid non-refundable money to host it, I started it with the hopes of getting it seen, and now I damn well want it to be put out there as best as it can be — which can only become more feasible through constant evolution and improvement, both to the blog and myself.
If you’re going to get into blogging at all, then you have to be prepared to accept that you will change how you write, whilst also being willing to stomach the reality that your blog isn’t going to explode in popularity overnight. You will look at old posts and see all their mistakes, what they failed to say, or how something wasn’t entirely clear for others to follow.
Noticing these things leaves a sour taste in your mouth, but there should also be a sweetness in recognising that you, yes you, have finally improved that bit more whilst on your blogging journey.
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