Interview with Ashley Rae
What inspired you to start a blog?
I’ve always been a writer, and I used to have an OpenDiary, then a LiveJournal. When I started my Spirit Healer business, I decided to keep a blog or three instead, dedicated to different audiences - a parenting blog (Moody Mama), a fitness blog to help me motivate myself and talk about food (Wrong Venus), and my business/spiritual blog (Spirit Healer.)
How long have you been blogging?
If you go all the way back to Opendiary, about thirteen years. If we’re talking my current blogs, about four years.
What advice would you give a new blogger?
I advise turning your inner critics into inner cheerleaders. Perfectionism is the enemy of any writer, and is the reason I have so few blog posts. I’m posting weekly now, but I used to go months between posts because my inner critics would say things like, “Who cares about that? No one’s going to read that. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
I had to turn them into cheerleaders, so now I hear, “YES! You GO, woman!”
You have three different blogs, each is very different from each other, and how do you find the time to keep them all up?
When I figure that out, I’ll let you know! Actually, they have very different themes, so when I’m on a fitness kick, I’ll post weekly in wrongvenus. When I have a parenting epiphany, I post to moodymama. Spirit Healer is my passion right now, and I just created a weekly newsletter so I can keep my clients and fans informed about all my projects and promote my blogs at the same time. For example, Easter weekend I’m hosting a writer’s retreat, and I’m currently teaching a weekly Intuitive tarot class. My birthday is coming up, so I’m offering discounted tarot readings on my etsy site. My book will be published any day now! So the newsletter is an organizational tool for me as well as a “Rae of Sunshine” for my readers - it helps me stay focused on my business and inspires me to blog more often and about things that inspire and amuse my readers.