Many years ago, I found that when I am most successful is when I am blogging ahead. This means that when I write my posts in advance and schedule them, I am more likely to keep up on a regular posting schedule.

In the past, I have participated in a lot of memes and link ups, so it was super easy to write posts way in advance, because I already had the topics. Since I’m not joining a lot of memes at the moment, it’s a little harder to blog ahead, because it means planning out what I want to talk about way in advance. And that only works if I have a general idea of things to talk about!

I actually decided fairly quickly to continue blogging, and didn’t actually take until the end of February to make my choice. In fact, I wrote all of the posts that went live in February in about a week. Then I put together my content schedule for March and started tackling it. As I am writing this post (which will go live on March 14th), it’s actually still February (the 25th to be exact).

This is great when it comes to having content ready, but can make it a little harder when something timely and important comes up. In the past when this has happened, I’ve generally done one of two things- either just have 2 posts go live on the same day, or reschedule the planned post for a later date.

The reverse can also happen, especially when it comes to reviews. Sometimes I have a review planned and have the post set up and waiting for my thoughts, but then I don’t finish the book in time (honestly, a regular occurrence). Then I have to decide if I will just have a post-free day, or scramble to come up with an alternative. Ideally, I’d like to have the books read and the reviews written before they ever go on the schedule, but considering I already have April’s schedule almost complete and have started on May means I can’t guarantee that happening. Unless I just don’t put any reviews on the schedule.

All in all though, blogging ahead is great and makes the most sense to me. I do most of my writing on the weekends and holidays. If I’m on a good roll, I’ll finish a post each day during the week and schedule it out, then do 3-4 posts per day on the weekend. In general I have about 2-3 weeks worth of posts written at any given time.