Spin Cycle: Lost

This week on the Spin Cycle, Ginny Marie is asking us to write a post prompted by the word lost. I have a great fear of getting lost. Many of my childhood nightmares had to do with getting lost. I am a map fiend. If you’re in a car with me and we’re traveling some place new, please give me a map so I can keep track of us at all times.

But for this post, I’d like to talk about a different kind of lost. In the past year, I’ve lost track of a lot of the blogs I used to follow. You see, way back in the early days of my blogging. I followed my favorite blogs through a blog reader called Google Reader, which was extremely popular at the time, but then suddenly disappeared. When that happened, a lot of us hopped over to Feedly. However, I never quite felt comfortable with it, especially after tablets came on the market. I had trouble flipping back and forth between reading my blogs on my laptop and reading them on my iPad. Then to make it worse, I lost my password and couldn’t even get onto Feedly anymore.

Then some friends recommend Bloglovin. So that’s what I’m using now. You can follow me here. The problem is that I lost track of a lot of the blogs I used to follow, so now I’m in the process of getting back to following them via Bloglovin.

For example, for years I used to follow Krista Van Dolzer over at Mother. Write. (Repeat.) She was an aspiring MG/YA author just like me, and she often had great agent interviews posted on her blog to help those of us who were looking for a literary agent. I lost track of her blog there for a while, but I was happy to see when I returned that both she and I will be debut authors this year! Her middle grade book The Sound of Life and Everything comes out a month after my young adult book Angelhood.

And then there’s the author known online simply as the “Authoress,” whose blog Miss Snark’s First Victim is widely known for its writing contests that help match up authors and agents and/or editors. In fact, Angelhood was a contestant there once and got some great feedback. Without that feedback, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to find critique partners, much less seek publication.

So I’ve lost track of a lot of blogs, but I’m trying to gain them back! What have you lost lately?