Dr. Tanya is seeking more Blogging Insights from our community of bloggers. She said that she read lots of posts and watched many videos on blogging, most of which advised that selecting a niche is essential for a blog to be a success. A niche means a particular subject or genre. People become expert at writing in a particular form and subject. Today’s question is about stretching your wings and flying beyond your comfort zone.
Do you ever ‘stretch’ (i.e.,expand your horizons) by writing outside your comfort zone? If not, why not?
I really don’t have a specific niche for my blog. My “comfort zone” is essentially whatever occurs to me. Sometimes I write about politics. Sometimes about religion. Sometimes about society and what’s going in my country and the world.
My comfort zone also includes responding to other bloggers’ prompts, be they song prompts, word prompts, or photo prompts, and I use these prompts for writing flash fiction posts. I even generate a few prompts of my own as fodder for other bloggers to use to stimulate their imaginations and creativity.
But Dr. Tanya’s question isn’t about what is inside my comfort zone, it’s about whether or not I stretch myself and wander outside of it. My answer is not often. My comfort zone is prose, yet I have, on a few unfortunate occasions, attempted to write poems — mostly very bad poems. So bad, in fact, that anyone who knows anything about poetry would be hard pressed to even label my feeble, misguided, and failed attempts to venture into writing poems to be poetry.
Does that answer the question?
If not, I have a suggestion
That is for your own protection
So please pay close attention
And organize an intervention
With the very good intention
Of bringing about a cessation
To this unwanted expression
And I will offer my confession
I disabuse myself of an impression
That I have in my possession
The ability and skill to write a poem
This, That, and the Other 
oh come on dango….don’t be so hard on yourself…. the poetry you wrote on this post is quite good…you could work on it more…and voila… you will be really good… I love reading your prose too…in face I started my one word prompts through your posts only
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Thanks. I appreciate your encouragement, but I know I am not…and never will be…any good at writing poetry.
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😀
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But this is a good poem. 👍👍👍
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If this is an example of your poetry, it seems pretty good.
I tried my hand at poetry some time ago and thought that my attempt was fairly atrocious. Somehow, I still don’t know why I posted it on my blog. Surprisingly , it was very much appreciated despite the fact that it was free verse. Since then, I post whatever comes to my mind and call it poetry.
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Aw, thanks.
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My pleasure.
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I never had a comfort zone. I write what I write and it’s definitely a mood thing … and what’s happening in my world. I never wanted a niche and I think it’s way too late to find one now.
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I never really thought about having a comfort zone per se, as I, like you, write about whatever strikes my fancy. But I do know that writing poems is in my discomfort zone.
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Fiction and poetry are outside my comfort zone and I am happy to leave them there.
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😂
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I have come around to writing more fiction than I ever thought I would. I’m not sure it is good fiction but I give it a try.
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