I have been talking about my future in blogging and other mediums for a while now. I still do not know what the right answer is. As my reading has shown, I want to spend more time talking about books in translation. I am so passionate about my new-found niche that I keep having thoughts of killing my blog and rebuilding it with a focus. Although I think this is a bad idea, I keep wanting to find new ways to promote world literature, because I think it does not get enough attention. It has improved in the past few years but there is a long way to go.
One of the reoccurring thoughts was to build something like Book Riot, Electric Lit or Lithub but have it focus solely on promoting books in translation. However, this idea is just far too big for one person and would require others to help. My past experiences with trying to get others involved have taught me that something like this rarely works unless everyone has the same level of passion. Which has led me to try and come up with new ideas to promote books in translation.
I currently have podcast called Lost in Translations dedicated to talking about books in translation, but I want to do more. I need ideas. I would love to grow the brand and offer more but I need to think smaller. I have decided to do more on the blog that is less reviews and more in the style of essays. Maybe I can incorporate my desire to improve my writing with my passion to promote translations. Maybe I need to start writing those articles promoting world literature but post them on my blog. I do not know, my desires to do more are far greater than my personal abilities. I have big ideas but need to focus on my capabilities.
I hope to be blogging more in the future, it really is my favourite medium and I have tried many. I love my podcast, which needs guests if anyone is interested, but I do think writing might be my primary focus. Next year makes ten years blogging and I hope it will be a successful year for my writing. I write this to communicate the thoughts circling in my head lately and help get myself back into blogging. Between being made redundant and then NaNoWriMo, I have not dedicated much time to writing for the blog. I hope to do more, I miss it. It is almost like an addiction. If I am not posting something it feels like I am not writing, which is not always the case. I guess I just like the feeling of accomplishment I get when I post my writing on my blog.
I think in 2019 I will try transforming my blog more into a media type site, focusing more on writing articles and keeping people informed about world literature. I am not sure what this will look like, if this will mean a name change or anything else. I will just do my part to work towards creating the content I would like to see.
I’m sorry to hear about your redundancy… I hope you find something that suits your interests and obvious capabilities:)
It’s hard to find just the right niche for blogging, but you may be on the right track with translations. Stu at Winston’s Dad has a successful and popular blog about translated fiction and there are a couple of others that specialise in it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that specialises in translated NF, nor have I ever come across one that is essays rather than reviews. Another possibility is to specialise in TF from a particular area, and African and South American translations come to mind as neglected areas.
I having being loving the direction of my reading, I want to promote translations as much as possible, and looking for new ways to do that. I love Stu, and everyone that blogs about translations. I feel like they do an awesome job.
I was thinking on doing more article type posting rather than reviews, more non-fiction would be good too. I’m not trying to find a speciality, just ways to promote the world of translations that I love so much…and that doesn’t get enough coverage.
I’ve tried various avenues blog wise over the years to promote world lit it is a hard job for a serious attempt look at complete review for me I intend to do more post linking to events like Eurovision or World Cup football with books they have been well received in the past it’s getting new readers interested that is the hard part
You do so much to promote translations. I want to do more, I love world lit so much, and only relatively new to it, I just want to share it to the world. It’s hard to keep up with everything happening in the world of translations, but would be nice to find or create a news source that covers that.
If you do want to start a new website, just get another domain and park it with your current host. That way, you don’t need to trash your blog in order to head off in a new direction. You might not think you’ll regret losing all those years of content, but you will! I wish I had more to show for 9 years of blogging at my current domain, but I’ve trashed my blog so many times. *sigh*
I think it would be good to be able to go to a single site and look up a country and read little bios of the major authors, see which of their works have been translated to English and read a short review. I’d also like to find out a bit about the literary scene in other countries, such as writers’ festivals and major lit prizes. I’d also be interested to learn about publishers that specialise in producing translated lit. I don’t know if an informative site like that already exists?
I like the lithub format for discovering books. It’s clean and easy to navigate.
Is it really nine years since we first met online? Crikey!!!!!
I don’t want to trash my own blog, I would probably regret it. I have grown so much as a reader and a writer I need to be able to see that clearly.
I don’t think there is a resource that offers anything like that, so much information and news could be shared if there was a place like you just described. I like what Lithub does but it would be cool to have a resource like that for translations. There is so much to learn about the world and a place to learn about everything happening would be cool. Since I can’t find a resource like that, I do feel compelled to maybe try to create something…but it’s a massive ambitious idea.
I’m not sure we have known each other for 9 years but it’s been a very long time. You slip in and out to talk literature and I’ve enjoyed our conversations.
I’ve thought about trying to do something like that myself, but it gives me a headache thinking about all the work it would take. I thought about restricting it to 21st C lit, which would make the content current and do away with the huge problem of covering *all* the classics and authors since the year dot. Also, I thought it would be good to have a mixed media site, with maybe short film clips for the bios – a montage of images and a voiceover – just to add intetest and because people don’t like reading too much stuff online. It would be a pretty cool project, but not one I’m up for. 🙂
I think maybe straight blogging has had its day, and images and video are what people want now. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to read blog posts any more. I think there could be a niche for an “information for readers” world lit site. Idk. Just something I’ve thought about a few times. Maybe you could give it a whirl! 🙂
It’s a massive idea, the more I think about it, the bigger it gets. I think a resource like this would be cool, something I know I would want, something I know could be useful for people wanting to explore the world.
So many lit media sites out there but many don’t explore world lit in great detail, unless Murakami or Knausgaard have a new book out. But I think translated lit could be on the verge of something big. People want to understand the world, not just what’s happening in America.