award | gallifreyan ramblings

Thanks to wanderlust77 for nominating me for this award!

The rules to this award are:

1. Write a post to show your award.
2. Acknowledge the blogger that nominated you.
3. Give a brief story about how you got started blogging.
4. Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers.
5. Nominate 10 bloggers for the award.

My blogging story

Well this isn’t actually my first blog. I’ve had a number of blogs before this on a variety of subjects, and I started blogging (on Blogspot *cringes*) around 2009, when I was 14-ish. I think my first blog was about Runescape, an online game I played a lot back then—I was inspired to make that blog because I read another Runescape player’s blog, and it looked really fun. I never got very far with that one, though.

But I had another blog which I ran for quite a long time and only ended up deleting a few years ago which was just a repository for my thoughts and ideas about all manner of things. I started that blog because I had so many ideas that I wanted to share, and I needed somewhere to put them all, to get them out of my head. It never really became very successful (no one is very interested in some teenager’s incoherent ramblings), but I formed a few connections with other bloggers over the years through that blog.

I started this blog in 2014 because… I had become obsessed with Doctor Who and didn’t have any other obsessive Whovians in real life to talk about Doctor Who with! Sort of like my previous blog, I had so many thoughts I wanted to share about this show and no one to share them with! So I took it to the blogosphere, and I’ve found plenty of people like me to share my ideas with and who are interested in sharing their ideas with me. This has by far been my most successful blog, even if I’ve been a bit neglectful of it in recent months (apologies btw).

My advice

Write for yourself, not for others. Write about what you’re passionate about, what you enjoy writing about, whether that’s some topic you’re interested in, or your own life and personal things, or whatever. Write the things you would want to read, and there should be no end to ideas for interesting, exciting content. Blogging should be leisure, never a chore, and if it ever gets to the point where it becomes a chore that you feel obligated to do for others, you’re doing it wrong.
Just some tips about writing in general: I’m not saying I’m the best writer in the world, but my writing has improved enormously since I’ve started this blog (just go back and read my early posts and see for yourself!), and I think I can give some helpful tips for those who want to improve their writing. First of all, read. When you read, especially (good) material that’s similar to the things you want to write, you naturally, subconsciously pick up on patterns and nuances that, with practice, you can naturally incorporate into your own writing. But you have to read a lot. Secondly, write, extensively, because, as miserable as the thought is, practice, and only practice, makes perfect. Thirdly, Thesaurus.com is your friend. The right word, with just the right nuance, can make a sentence so much more eloquent and effective. I always have Thesaurus.com open when I write literally anything because I’m a perfectionist about using the best choice of vocabulary. Doing this has also expanded my working vocabulary enormously over the years as well, which is a huge boon to my writing.

Nominations

I always end up nominating the same people when I do these, so this time I’m going to nominate my 10 most recent followers (I want to know more about y’all).