Skip to main content

Blog Reflection

My experience with blogging this semester was fun and explorative. I combined two of my favorite things—baking and travel—into one blog that alternated to explore both topics. I have done blogs in the past, but this one was unique in that it explored more topical things instead of just my day-to-day life. 

For my baking blogs, I tried to use my own recipes. Otherwise, I used recipes inspired off of Pinterest. My recipe blogs included salted caramel brownies, cinnamon streusel coffee cake, peach turnovers, and crème brulée. I created these blogs by writing a short blurb about the recipe, listing the ingredients and instructions, and taking pictures of each stage of the recipe process. For my travel blogs, I wrote about my trip to the Dominican Republic, past trips to Uganda, my spring break trip, a bachelorette weekend in St. Charles, and my summer travel plans. For these blogs, I simply wrote a summary of each experience and included pictures of the place in which I traveled. The blogs I wrote about the publishing industry were a part of a project for this class. I have written thousands of essays and reports, so it was nice to use a different format for this project. My process for writing these blogs included a lot of research, spanning ten to fifteen sources, creating an outline for how I wanted to organize this information, and writing each blog post for a total of three. 

As I said in the beginning, this is not my first time blogging. I have kept a blog since I was in high school that centered more around my life in Uganda as well as my faith journey. I haven't worked on this blog for a while, as I don't live there any longer and I have also just been busy with life and college. But I would definitely be interested in blogging again in the future. I may even try to incorporate that into my career in some way, as I am planning on working in the publishing industry and freelancing as a writer. Overall, I enjoyed my experience blogging this semester and I look forward to applying the skills I have learned for future classes and jobs. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which Book Genres Produce the Most Revenue?

When is the last time you picked up a book? Yesterday? Today? A month ago? Maybe you're trying to come up with the last time you picked up a book. Some people might say that with all the other sources of entertainment in our world today, the amount of people reading has gone downhill. That would make perfect sense. After all, life is busy. Who has the time to read for leisure these days anyway? But fortunately, this is false. Books, both electronic and physical copies, are more popular now than ever. This is great news for the publishing industry. But you may be wondering, what is it that keeps the publishing industry alive? Over the years, certain genres have become more popular than others. Therefore, writers hoping to make it big (or at least keep the lights on) need to know what's "in" so that they can survive in the publishing world. The question for these writers is: which genres make the most revenue?  In the article “23 Gripping Book Industry Statistics [2023]...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Big 5

In my last blog article, I mentioned two ways of publishing books: self-publishing and traditional publishing. This blog article is going to focus on traditional publishing for the purpose of exploring which publishing companies are the most popular and how their websites attract writers of particular genres.  According to Olivia Smith in the article, "What are the 'Big Five' Publishing Houses?," there are five main traditional publishing houses (Smith):  Penguin/Random House, Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins,                           Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan Although these five publishing houses still hold plenty of hype in the publishing world, it is hard for writers to get published (Smith). Therefore, as I mentioned in the last article, self-publishing rates have skyrocketed in recent years. But still, the Big Five continue to bring in the majority of revenue from book sales.  Penguin R...
Post a Comment
Read more

About Me

Hi there! My name is Emma! As you could probably tell by the name of my blog, I have a passion for baking and travel. A little bit about me... I am originally from Mt. Sterling, IL with ties to my birth town of Elgin in Chicago. In the fourth grade, I moved to Uganda, where my family and I founded a school for underprivileged children. I spent eight wonderful years there. When I was a senior in high school, I moved back so that I could get a job and save up for college. I ended up moving to Macomb, IL in 2020, as did the rest of my family, where I currently do life.  I am a junior at Western Illinois University majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Professional Writing. I work part-time as the manager of The Study, a small locally-owned coffee shop on the square here in Macomb. I've worked there for over two and a half years and I absolutely love it. Coffee is another passion of mine. In my free time, I enjoy serving on the worship team at my church, spending time with my bo...
Post a Comment
Read more