To blog or not to blog? Some inaugural musings.

Firstly, apologies to all fans of The Bard for such terrible misquoting.

With that over, let’s get down to business. This is my first post with More than Writers. So you might be wondering, who am I and what am I doing here?

I shall try to answer. I'm Natasha. In 2022, I published my first two Biblical fiction novels. It had taken a year to get from completing my first draft to publication, and I could never have done it without ACW. So many people held my hand, encouraged me to publish, showed me what to do, beta read, endorsed and reviewed my books. If you were one of them, you have my heart’s genuine gratitude. Thank you.

Due to the genre I write in, I had few choices regarding publishing. Self-publishing it was. Knowing that no-one was going to sell my books except me (and my mother), and never one to do things by halves, I knuckled down on marketing. I set up a website, Facebook page, Instagram profile and TikTok account. I signed up for conferences, giveaways, Amazon ads, podcasts, etc. Everyone told me blogging was a great thing to do, so I started my own blog and popped myself down on the More than Writers waiting list.

After two book launches and ten months of drowning in a sea of marketing mayhem, reality hit. My books were not selling fast. Most of my time was taken up with things that weren’t producing results (at least not quickly) and I had lost my first love: writing Kingdom stories. I never set out to be an author. God told me to write a book, so I did it. But somewhere along the way, being an author became a burden rather than a pleasure. Writing, a source of pressure rather than a spiritual conversation with my Lord.

I abandoned TikTok, reduced the frequency of blogging and posting, and committed to writing my fourth novel, rediscovering my love for the discovery draft. 

So, why on earth am I here? Why have I said ‘yes’ to another commitment and joined the More than Writers blogging team?

This is the point where I’d love to tell you that God called me to do this. That I’m being obedient to his calling and giving up something else in order to do MTW. The truth is, it’s because my personality type persists. I’m still an all-or-nothing type. I still need to learn from the not-as-wise-as-King-Solomon-but-still-pretty-wise Master Yoda. “Patience you must have, my young Padawan. Have patience and all will be revealed.”

I’ve just returned from the incredible Kingdom Writer’s Retreat led by the wonderful Three J’s (Joy Margetts, Joy Vee and Joanna Watson). At one point, we chatted about writing testimony stories, considering Paul’s testimony to King Agrippa in Acts 26. We noticed how, after his conversion, God didn’t change Paul’s personality type. He sanctified it. 

My Father God is still sanctifying my personality. He’s nowhere near finished and has a lot of work ahead of Him. But hopefully, somewhere along the way, I can share my writerly mistakes with you through this blog, and you can learn from my mishaps (no doubt frequently rolling your eyes.) 

So that’s why I’m blogging today. Now, it’s over to you. Do you blog? Where? Why? How? Where does your inspiration come from? I’d love to know. For ‘to blog or not to blog’—that is the question for today.

Natasha Woodcraft lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, 4 sons, a spotty dog, an evil bunny and some much maligned fish. She believes stories have power to communicate deep truth and transform lives. Her published novels, The Wanderer Scorned & The Wanderer Reborn, explore God’s redemptive purposes for messy people by reimagining the tale of Cain & Abel. Also a songwriter, Natasha peppers her emotional prose with poetry and song.