Snakes and Ladders (BBAW)

As a book blogger, you start whispering your first thoughts, your posts, then as your confidence builds, you get not necessarily louder, but your voice carries better - further, you feel your ability to express your thoughts, to confidently map out the process by which you arrived at a conclusion has improved. This Situation comes about via the support network you build up starting with that first individual that heard your earliest whispers and answered -  this gives you that boost, that sets you up, for those dark days when no one seems to know you’re alive, because blogging can be a bit like snakes and ladders, there are days when all you do is climb, when everything you write resounds like a bell clear to all, and then there are those that, no matter what you do, you appear to be shouting into a vacuum and down the snake you go. Slowly this little community builds and if you are lucky continues growing, but if you are extra lucky you never loose those original individuals that were there at the start.

My first ever comment was from Pete Karnas from What You Read, a fantastic blogger living in China and who I still regularly exchange comments with, also three other bloggers that were there in those first days are Gina from Books, art, and other distractions, Bellezza from Dolce Bellezza & my first ever and still favourite challenge Japanese Literature Challenge (now in it’s fifth season).  There is also an individual who constantly makes me up my game with the books he finds and the other reason for my continued admiration for the works of Japanese Writers: Mel U, of The Reading Life. Thankfully I’m still in regular contact with these people and my blogging world is a lot better for it.  So a big thank you for being there in the early days and for still being there now.