The transition...

Years back, when I started blogging I used to observe the 'big' bloggers conduct a move from Blogger to Wordpress. This was like the holy grail of blogging; a point at which your readership warranted the commitment to move to your own domain (own your brand!) and the transition to the big-boy, serious web design tool that is Wordpress. I catalogued this experience under 'never going to affect me' and continued very happily on my free, basic blog template. Now though, over 800 blog posts later I am making the transition myself.

For lots of reasons:

1. What on earth was I thinking with the name 'Lou, Boos and Shoes'?! I opted for this adage in a moment of haste when I set up my first ever blogpost: my name is Lou, I had young children who I optimistically call 'Boo' and I like shoes! Hah. That was it. It took me all of about two minutes. That was the landscape then, there were quirky titles galore and very few bloggers used their own names. This when writing anonymously under a pen name was 'the thing'. I suspect I felt the medium of blogging was new and frankly, mildly embarrassing, it had an undercurrent of neediness to it. Women with time their hands sending their inner most thoughts into the Internet ether. I look back on that time fondly now; it was a time of friendship and kindness and I wouldn't change it for the world. It's when I did my blogging apprenticeship. But the name always troubled me; I grew up and it didn't.

2. Then Instagram came along. The irreverent, faster, quicker, cooler little sibling of the blog; micro-blogging. This changed the landscape though I didn't know it at the time. Blogging shifted, less time to read posts (why take five minutes to read an essay when an image does the same at a glance?)

3. Then Pinterest came along. Much of what I used to blog about what accompanied by beautiful images. Before Pinterest there was nowhere to keep said images so I used to post them, in great long lists of scrolling loveliness. With few words.

4. Then I started to write more. Commenters started asking for more essays, they liked the content, I found a 'voice' on the issues I was facing. Readers were loyal and followed along. I wrote about motherhood and women and whatever preoccupied me. It was an outlet and this is how over the course of seven years I produced no less than 818 posts which had 2.7 million hits (!) on whatever the hell was in my head.

5. I started a Masters in Creative Writing and Publishing. The publishing part has been this year's concentration of study - along with working on the draft of my novel - and it's been a revelation. It's all very well writing a book but I needed to learn about the industry in which I want work. I've worked in publishing before when I first graduated university; it's as complex and avant garde as any other creative industry, be it the art world, media, film and so on. So I got busy absorbing the nuances. Where does blogging sit within this industry?

6. It felt like the right time to change. There are elements of what I write here that I wish to move on from. It is exactly the same as when you read an old diary from your teens; things you thought about/wore/felt keenly at that time are no longer your focus now. And they can seem faintly ridiculous. I am OK with that; you can't walk away from your history. But looking at it every day isn't necessary any more.

So to conclude, I am making the transition to a new blog/site. It's not ready yet - learning to use Wordpress is like learning a new language and me and computer coding are not happy bedfellows. BUT...I am forcing myself to put into practise everything this blog has taught me. It's become my portfolio of work so those 818 posts have, in my new space, been whittled down to just over 100 and I feel so much better! I have stripped away all the dross and instead I now have a bedrock of content that is reflective of where I am right now; a burgeoning writer who writes about the things that affect her.

When the time comes to move across, I will of course let you all know and do something clever with the code so that people get redirected. I hope you'll come with me.

My new blog can be found here...