What makes a good blogger?
WelI I suppose it’s all a bit subjective but in technical terms, probably not me…I’m a sporadic poster & can’t seem to find the inspiration to write easily if I’ve nothing pertinent to say ( I can hear Amar now wishing the same were true for the spoken word!) and with spare time being a luxury, I tend to sketch draft copies while waiting somewhere – usually for Emma at singing lessons or just recently in the doctor’s waiting room. Our new doctor isn’t known for her punctuality & on my last visit I had to wait there for an hour & forty minutes! You could – and I very nearly did – write a whole post in that time!
Although I suppose a good blog would be easily found, I don’t deliberately write to be favoured by Google but just as a way of keeping friends, family and guests in touch with what’s going on at Les Crouquets.
18 and counting...... an uninspiring topic of conversation!
In reality over the Winter most of the activity here is maintenance, admin and other such unsexy ( Is it ok to use that word? If not please replace with unexciting) stuff….there are only so many times you can write about how many shutters have now been painted. 18 and counting….
Even the gorgeous snow photos have begun to take on a repetitive feel…here’s yet another one from Saturday morning when we really were expecting rain.
The title of this blog is “Tales From Our Dordogne Gites…a peek behind the scenes at our holiday cottages and life in rural France….” so I suppose the last bit does give me a fairly wide platform in terms of subject matter- in fact I have several posts which are in the drafts box, all just waiting for the fine tuning.
I’ll get around to finishing them all when I can gather the facts & photos but today I’m digressing and writing about blogs.
This week I read an entry from Sue Scott’s blog The Quince Tree. I first started reading Sue’s blog last year when I discovered a single wild quince on a bush outside L’Atelier which I thought it was just a pretty shrub. My sister then happened to mention she’d seen a blog all about quinces and as we have a lovely big quince tree here too I just had to look it up. It’s a great blog, very readable, wonderful photos & it’s about so much more than quinces.
Quinces at Les Crouquets
In Sue’s post about blogging she suggests, among other things, that adding a list of blogs you like to your own blog is a good way of getting your news out there. I think it’s an excellent idea and one I’ve decided to adopt ( Hope that’s ok, Sue!).The Quince Tree will be on my list of course, as will Ed Vogues World. Ed is a regular guest at Les Crouquets (albeit under another guise!) & he has made it his challenge to write about something every day for a year. He’s doing brilliantly – I doubt I could have dug deep enough or found enough time to keep that up!
With my decision made I can now see me spending many hours wading through other people’s blogs to see which ones may complement mine…. I tend to favour blogs with not too much text in one block and lots of photos is a must. A picture really does paint a thousand words so even if you don’t like the writing style you still have something good to look at!
I’ll have even less time now for writing!
Brilliant. Lovely blog which sums up exactly how I feel! Keep up the good work, your gorgeous photos are not getting too repetitive for me
Thank you Paddy! You have some lovely photos on your blog too…I’ll be visiting again to read more of your story!
gosh, 18 shutters and counting???!!! glad I don’t have to do that 😉 ….. we went for aluminium shutters (everyone has those in Croatia) although I understand they would not be in keeping with your beautiful farm and gites and you want wood. How often do you have to do them? I remember in Italy I had to paint many many shutters both at my parents house and grandmother’s house, so I know exactly how hard work that is!!!
I agree that blogging takes a lot of time and dedication, I seem to go with the flow, and now that I blog more regularly and need more “material” – any time we go over to Croatia I shall be taking more and more pictures, as I think pictures speak louder than words. I also find that sometimes I just look at some of the pictures we have taken and I can start a story from there, get some inspiration starting from the pictures. Ciao for now! Elisa
Still 14 to go Elisa!!!Don’t know if we’ll get them all done this year or not as we’re repairing, stripping, undercoating & changing to a more cheery soft green rather than white……looking good but alu is definitely so much more low maintenance!!
I take photos of everything just in case I find some inspiration lurking there at a later date…computer is now overloaded with my 000’s of snaps & is really needing a declutter !! No time though , too busy reading blogs & painting 😉 !!
that green colour looks great, and I am sure it will look fab on your house, will you update the website pictures once all the painting is done? tks for the LIKE on FB, I am trying to learn FB as we don’t use the personal page/profile section but just the blog, and I’m preparing a page for the house. What a great way to interact with people with all this social media… 🙂
Yes Elisa, just waiting on the Spring sunshine & some greenery to get back out there with the camera!
What did we do before all this social media?? It is a great way of keeping in touch with people & up to date with what’s going on but it certainly eats up more time than I would like…too many interesting blogs and FB pages out there to keep on top of!!
Elena what lovely quinces. I had none last year so I am keeping my fingers crossed for a good harvest this year.
thank you for the link, which of course I don’t mind you doing at all. I wish I could help with your problem commenting on my blog -very strange.
Thank you Sue – I have tried again but still no joy. Hopefully it’s just a blip & will sort itself out in time. In the meantime I’ll keep looking forward to reading your posts!