What a delight to learn that I’d been nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award!  Many thanks to Mom Of Two Little Girls for visiting RFTM and sharing the love.  You should check out her work – she’s blogging her way through motherhood, and a lot of us can relate to that.

blogger-recognition-award

To pay it forward, here are the rules:

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  • Write a post to show your award.
  • Give a brief story of how your blog started.
  • Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
  • Select 15 other bloggers for this award.
  • Comment on each of their blogs, letting them know they’re nominated and linking back to this post.

How my blog started:

I’ve cycled in and out of writing my entire life.  Journaling, poetry, then plays – I was pretty consistent through college but fell away from it after graduation.  It was easy to lose myself in teaching and my “regular” life, and without a conscientious effort to carve out time my writing was one of the first pastimes to go.  Once the kids came home I had friends who asked how my writing was going (because anyone staying home all day surely has time for hobbies) and I’d duck their questions, feeling like a failure.

Once the kids got old enough the itch to write got stronger.  Not just to write, though – after all, I’d kept up my journaling through the years, but suddenly it just didn’t feel like enough.  I wanted to share my writing, and while my friends were highly entertained by my Facebook status updates it just wasn’t feeding my soul.  The blog idea percolated for a while but after several thumps on my hard head it became clear it was time to dust off my writing skills and get going.  Thus began Riddle from the Middle.

Advice to new bloggers:

**  Find your voice and embrace it.  Whether your style is somber or humorous, formal or informal, educational or entertaining – your audience is out there, and they’ll know when you’re being authentic.  Authenticity rings true in every circle.

**  Don’t chase your stats.  Some people want to grow their blog, and there are ways to actively pursue that through social media and networking.  Others just want a platform for their writing, and your blog will grow as its audience finds it.  There’s no right or wrong way to do this blogging thing.  Roll with what moves you.  (That being said, you and I both know you’re going to be fixated on your stats for a while and that’s fine.  As long as it doesn’t become so all consuming that you’re checking in twice an hour.)

Take a minute to visit some of my nominations.

1.  Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care

2.  Joeyfully Stated

3.  Van by the River

4.  Random Writings on the Bathroom Wall

5.  No Facilities

6.  Cee’s Photography

7.  Nickworthy

8.  That Weird Brown Girl

9.  Teleporting Weena

10.  positively un-broken

11.  The Snark and I

12.  I’m Sick and So Are You

13.  Cordelia’s Mom, Still

14.  A Thomas Point of View

15.  Linda G. Hill