Goodbye 2015. Hello Christmas.

It has been quite a year on the road this 2015. Here's a recap of some things that have made this year full and fabulous.


New Books Galore. Every time I visited a blog there were new books from the writers I've been connecting with for a few years. 

We had a great AtoZ Challenge with so many amazing bloggers entering to provide interesting and entertaining posts throughout April.

The Team put together a year long tribute to Tina who organized so well for the AtoZ Challenge. She was greatly missed, and hugely valued by her friends.

Some new Hops filled up the Summer Days and linked us with other bloggers we might have missed otherwise!

Unfortunately, a lot of the bloggers we enjoyed retired or took long breaks, but they left with grace and for good reasons.

Jeremy Hawkins designed a super T-shirt for the AtoZ Challenge Survivors. 

The Insecure Writers Group continued to be a huge success each first Wednesday of the month with so many excellent and supportive posts.


There's a lot more, but these were the highlights for me. Now I'm fastening my seatbelt and getting ready for 2016. This is my last AtoZ Challenge post of 2015, so I leave you now to hunt down the tree and find the egg nog.

Sylvia Villalobos: Why Do We Blog?

I’m relatively new to blogging (seven months or so), and still learning about this fascinating world filled with communities and challenges and stories. Great personal stories. As I make my way through the blogosphere, I discover equally interesting places from faraway countries and old neighborhoods. I discover a lot of other things, but will focus on the first-mentioned aspects of blogging.

So, why do we blog?  To share our stories, I would say, but that’s hardly the only reason. Perhaps to promote a product, establish our writing, build a platform, express our creativity, be part of communities.

Some communities are so well organized (and crowded), I can’t bring myself to be commenter number 189. Does the large number of comments affect the blogger’s personal rapport with followers? I don’t know. I’m asking.

What I do know is that not having a blog is a thing of the past.  Since I like to write, I started blogging when I was told no writer is without a blog nowadays. So far so good, but are we blogging because everyone else is or for reasons that will last?

According to quora.com most blogs are abandoned soon after creation, with 60-80% abandoned within one month, and many surviving blogs are not regularly updated.  That may mean nothing to the serious blogger, but in the world of data those are large numbers.

On the other hand, the longest running blog, according to newswireless.net, belongs to Rupert Goodwins who started blogging in 1996. Now that’s staying power and dedication -- seventeen years of blogging. I’d like to think staying power is one of the goals. Otherwise, it seems like a lot of work and dedication gone to waste. A long-standing and active blog, it appears, stands on two pillars: great content and persistence. Since blogs are similar to personal journals, as a new blogger I find posts with personal touches most inviting.

For a time I thought blogging was something young people did, another aspect of the social media revolution. It didn’t take long to learn that’s not the case. Some of my favorite posts are written by bloggers transformed by life experiences. Not long ago, I read a post titled Good Girl Disease, by Doreen McGettigan. I think you’ll be moved by this true-life story. I was.

So, what is it that makes you blog?  And what motivates you to blog often?   

About the author: Silvia lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. Her stories have appeared at Fiction365, Red Fez, and Pure Slush.  She is currently working on her mystery novel, Stranger or Friend.