Reviewing My 2019

Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is how my 2019 has gone on this blog.

First Full Year

The first full year of cKotch.Com is coming to a close. Moment seems a bit bittersweet.

I’ve met many goals on this blog while coming nowhere close to others. In my professional life, I’ve gone from subbing to teaching to soul searching.

(That last part will have to remain mostly private for now.)

With all the things accomplished and unaccomplished, now seems a good time for reflection.

Like in my earlier mid-year reflection, this current post will look back at how things have gone. I’ll consider strengths and weaknesses and see how my writing’s developed.

My focus will be what’s happened since my mid-year reflection, but I will mention some relevant things from before that point. Plans for growth in 2020 will be detailed more in next week’s post.

Some Strength

Let’s start with the best news.

This year saw my first self-published books on Amazon. First came my short story collection Five Strange Stories. Then came my poetry collection Good Stuff: 50 Poems from Youth.

These books may not have been bestsellers, but they really did teach me quite a bit about publishing.

I learned how to use Amazon’s tools. I came to better understand the challenges of self-publishing. I now see a good path forward for future projects.

If you want to hear more about this experience with Five Strange Stories, I have another post which goes into more detail. You can check it out right here.

Additionally, my audience has grown thanks to readers sharing my work with their friends.

My Facebook page especially has seen a recent surge of likes. I’ve talked to a few weekly readers and heard good things from them. I’m touched my writing has started connecting with people.

Best example would be hearing some readers discuss my post “How I Craft Dialogue.” They enjoyed the example dialogue in the post and found genuine insight in what I had to say.

Again, I’m thankful for all readers of this blog and my published works. I want to make this site a community for you all. I’ll certainly be looking for ways to boost that community feeling in the coming year.

Some Room to Grow

Now for some things that could stand to improve.

First, I need to continue growing my audience.

I love the dedicated group I’ve got now, but more readers will be needed for me to really grow.

There are technical reasons for this need.

Increased hits help search engines find me. Blog readers are more likely to read my books. Over time, a large audience could enable me to seek revenue through blogging.

There are personal reasons to seek audience growth as well.

Dialogue with an audience informs me what readers want. Readers can direct me to similar creators who could help me grow and network. I find joy in seeing others enjoy my writing.

Tied to the need for audience growth is a need for increased social media presence.

I’ve already discussed this concern in my post “Taking Forever to Tweet.” So, all I’ll say here is that social media is where people are these days. I should engage people there if I want them to come here.

Finally, I believe I need to improve the focus of this blog.

My tagline is “Writing and Inspiration.” Most posts follow this motto well. I either talk about my history writing a particular story or explain how something has impacted my writing.

However, some posts don’t seem to connect well to my blog’s theming. I’ll barely mention writing at all here. I’ll talk about something even if I can’t connect it to writing.

Now, I don’t necessarily want to stop these posts. They tend to be good life stories or other experiences worth sharing. Good lessons can be found there.

One solution I’ve been considering is making these posts distinct in some way. That way, I can diverge from my focus a little bit without feeling too off-topic.

To Be Continued Next Decade…

This isn’t only the end of a year coming up. We’re moving into a whole new decade now.

Many changes are happening, both in my life and in the world. It all really does seem worthy of a whole new decade.

With some of the things I’m pondering and planning, I almost feel everything’s starting over again.

I want to make 2020 the year cKotch.Com and my writing take off. I want the 2020s to be a decade filled with my work.

Of course, these plans will be covered more in-depth in next year’s first post.

See you all in 2020!

Kotcher’s Call to Action

If you like my content and wish to see more, then you have a few options.

You could check out my books Five Strange Stories and Good Stuff: 50 Poems from Youth on Amazon. They are enrolled in the Kindle Matchbook program, so anyone who buys the paperbacks can also get the eBooks for free.

You can also check my Essential Posts page for links to some of my greatest posts to the cKotch.Com blog.

Finally, be sure to like my Facebook page and share it with your friends. I post a link there whenever a new blog post goes live each Friday at 5:00 PM EST.