Part of being a modern poet; is social media but as I said in my last blog, I’m crap at blogging on a regular schedule. This failing extends to my social media accounts (TikTok, Instagram, Twitter). Over the past year, I’ve slowly got my head around what I’m supposed to do with Instagram. I’ve even gotten past the initial terror of filming myself for TikTok. While my focus has shifted to those platforms, I’ve wondered what to do with this site. Part of me is keen on the whole, hit delete and start again– except that would be twelve years of work down the drain and not particularly fair on the followers who keep coming back each time my lazy arse remembers to put together something to post.

An overhaul is overdue.

I was sensible enough to make the domain name CarolJForrester which ties in with all my social media accounts, so that isn’t going to change.

The existing archive is a big issue.

This post will take the total number of published posts to 1,185. I’m planning on culling the vast majority of those. My posts on my writing journey will stay, and so will posts like Mrs Macaulay and Shropshire Witches, but all of the flash-fiction posts will come down, as will most of my poems.

Why am I taking down so many of my poems?

It’s not because I don’t like them. Some of them aren’t particularly good, and it doesn’t take much to see how far my writing has come since I first started posting poetry on WordPress, but the point of an author’s website is to showcase their work and encourage people to buy their books. It is a marketing tool. The sheer number of posts on this site also makes it unwieldy.
So, we’re going to organise things this way.

Longform blogging on WordPress where I can dive into the inspiration behind certain poems, talk about being a writer, and share updates on various projects such as the novel, my current pamphlet in progress, and ideas for the future. TikTok will be performance videos and quick updates on projects and publications. Instagram will become the primary place where I share new poems, and Twitter will be a mix of poems, updates, links, and retweets.

I will not be posting any flash fiction or short stories on this site, or on my social media accounts. I’m probably going to delete my Tumblr account, and potentially my Medium account (though that only has about five posts on it.) I’m not sure how easy revamping this site will be, so if you follow me, I recommend finding me on Twitter or Instagram in case I screw things up and everything comes crumbling down. I am @caroljforrester on pretty much everything social media related.

For those of you who have been around for a while, thank you for sticking with me. I hope you will like the new route this site is heading in, and if it all goes well, it should mean a more regular posting schedule as I can write blog posts in advance. (I’ll just need to practice patience when it comes to not hitting ‘publish now’.
Wish me luck.