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I recently took a free class about blogs from Reedsy, a website that offers professional help to writers.
One of the topics discussed in the online class was the purpose of a blog. While I was reading about this, I realized that I had begun my blog for the purpose of improving my teaching skills; however, now that I’m retired, my focus is on my own writing and my other retirement activities.
The purpose of this post is to explore the current focus of my blog.
Practicing Writing Skills
The biggest focus of my current blog posts is to practice various writing skills.
I am currently exploring the ideas for my second novel so I decided to writing a series of character studies. In each post, a new character finds herself in a different situation. I use distinct character traits to identify her. I choose a unique name and reveal whether she is a child, youth, young adult, or older. I sometimes describe her physical characteristics, especially if they are important to the story. For example, if she is riding a bicycle, I may describe the strength of her legs.
Since each story is unique, I use specific description to illustration the setting. She may be in a bedroom, on a trail in the country or behind the bar in a night club. In addition to using visual description, I try to add smells and noises to make the setting as vivid as possible. Perhaps, someone has spilled whiskey on the bar or the juke box is blasting out Beatles’ music.
Sharing My Writing Experiences
Since I retired almost three years ago, I have written one novel and over one-hundred blog posts. I also have petitioned several publishers about the publication of my first novel.
Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot in the past three years about my current writing activities. I like to share my experiences so that other writers can benefit from my practice, and so that I can interact with other people who love to write. Writers have so much passion about their work, and that excites me.
When I was writing my first novel, I wrote a post about my experience. You see, I didn’t have much of a clue how this project would go. Maybe I’d write it and find out it was awful. Maybe I’d have to completely rewrite it.
I wrote about telling people about my novel writing. They asked detailed questions. I made no promises. I protected my heart from criticism, but I listened to it as well.
What happened? I actually wrote a novel that is now being considered by a few publishers.
In another post, I wrote about how I evaluated publishers for my first novel. I thought this was important to share with other writers since publishers all have their own missions. Writers waste time if they don’t evaluate which publisher is appropriate for their book.
Sharing My Retirement Experiences
Retirement has turned out well for me because, during the first month, I made a three-part plan of what I wanted to do. The first goal was to write a novel. Second, I wanted to become fluent in a second language, and, third, I wanted to raise money for scholarships for community college and vocational students.
I’ve met so many people in the last three years and I’ve learned that some retired people are happily retired and others are bored. I write blog posts about my retirement experiences to demonstrate how retirement can be a vivacious time of life.
I’ve traveled several times since my retirement, and I’ve written about these trips. Two summers ago, I visited my cousin’s dairy farm in Minnesota. I wrote a blog post about being a “town girl on a dairy farm.” From that same trip, I wrote about how my ancestors came from Kashubia, currently a northern part of Poland. I also wrote about a hike on my great-grandfather’s property, which is now a Minnesota State Park. And I pleased my dozens of cousins when I wrote about how diverse they were.
I joined a philanthropy group named The Alamo Women’s Club since they raise money for college and vocational scholarships. Now, I’m the chair of the AWC Scholarship Committee. I’ve written a blog post about how we awarded eleven scholarships to financially-disadvantaged students in April, 2023. But that’s not all the organization does. We collect coats in the winter for people who need clothing. We assemble food packets for Ukraine refugees in Poland. We sponsor jewelry sales for scholarships. Our activities have provided a host of ideas for my writing blog posts.
Now that I’ve written this post, I’m going to revise my front page to update the purpose of my blog. It’s nice to gain clarity.
Tess Perko's Blog 