5 Years of The Written Word(s)!

Happy (Belated) Birthday, TWW(s)!

I mean, HOLY CRAP, right? Can you guys believe that my little baby blog is 5 years old now?! Feels like yesterday when I felt the sudden urge to show off all the fun & pretty things I was getting in the mail from my pen pals and from Postcrossing, just before the idea hit me of creating a blog to do exactly that.

A lot has changed in the last 5 years, both on this blog and in my life. Originally the slogan/tagline for this site I had decided on was 'Snail Mail - Geekery - Life' but was later updated to better incorporate my undying and all-consuming love of words and reading words and writing words and everything that goes along with that. Since then the definition of what TWW(s) is has grown and changed, and even with my posting activity not being what it was when I first started posting this has continued to be a place that I enjoy returning to as something of an online oasis - or blanket fort, if you will - designed especially for me 😍

Just for fun, let's take a quick peek at TWW(s)'s history, starting from December 20th, 2013:

The very first banner I created for TWW(s) - #Nostalgia

Back in 2013, I was in my 3rd year of university, and one of the courses I was in required us to start our own blog to update it regularly, to write posts in our chosen niche and to share said posts on social media. I didn't create TWW(s) for the purposes of that class; I actually created a blog that was originally titled 'Who Run The World? Geeks!' (you may have guessed I was a little obsessed with a particular song by Beyonce at this moment in time 😂) but after being told by my professor that the title was a little too long, it was later amended to 'Geeks Run The World'

Sound familiar? It should, because I would later start a series of interviews right here on TWW(s) by that same name, where I interviewed various geeks & nerds that inspired me for various reasons.


I learned a lot about blogging from that course, and from the feedback of my professor and my fellow students - I learned not to add any more than 1-2 .gif's into a single post (apparently 5 .gif's is just too many 😝), and I learned a few more of the intricacies of HTML than I had previously known. It was really fun deciding on what types of posts I wanted to write and finding images to correspond with them. I also may have created my first Twitter account for the purposes of that class, although I'm not 100% sure on that.

Once the course was done (Pretty sure I ended up with a final grade of 89 or something close to that 😁) and I was enjoying the Christmas break with my family, I was also enjoying all the fun gifts I was getting in the mail from my pen pals. This was also the first month I received post cards from Postcrossing. It was during this break from school when I came up with the idea of creating a snail mail-centric blog where I could write about all the cool things I was sending and receiving in the mail. And with how much fun I had writing about my various fandoms on 'Geeks Run The World' I decided that this blog would also be a great opportunity to continue writing those types of posts for my own enjoyment instead of writing them as part of a class.

Image taken from TWW(s)'s Facebook Page ~ 2014. I did not keep this photographic banner on my blog for very long, mainly because I wanted to keep the tag line of  'Writing - Geekery - Life' instead of replacing the first word with 'Letters'. Still, creating this banner image was a fun excuse to use my DSLR camera & to get more familiar with photo editing :)

I wrote reviews for the books I was reading. I participated in a Photo-A-Day challenge on Instagram and shared my pictures in a weekly blog post. I also posted about my progress doing a YA Reading Bingo challenge! When I came across a particular word that struck a chord with me, I would dedicate an entire post to that one word and telling people about the reasons that it stuck with me and why it suited whatever events were happening in my life at that time. I also developed an addiction to note cards & washi tape so that I could consistently be creating pretty snail mail parcels to both send to the people I cared about & to show off to all of you XD

From that 1 year I decided to decorate my blog's aesthetic for the holidays! 🎄

Writing posts for this blog actually granted me with a number of unique opportunities, and it also gave me the courage I needed to pursue opportunities of my own! I never would have started writing posts and tabletop reviews for Paper Droids if I hadn't started this blog (unfortunately Paper Droids, an amazing online magazine created by and for geeks, no longer exists 😔)! I also wrote posts for other websites, such as Superheroesque and of course +5 Charisma, the official IGGPPC blog!

I was also approached by various companies and given the opportunity to write featured posts, which was actually really fun to do. I never wrote a post for a company where I didn't like the type of post they were looking for or the service they provided that they wanted me to plug in my post. I was also able to participate in the official blog tour for Mariah Stewart's The Last Chance Matinee. And while I was doing my 4 month post-grad in Toronto, I attended the 2015 Ontario Book Blogger Meet-Up, and I received a looooot of free ARCs and published books! The swag for that event was crazy!

And here we are, 5 years later 💝💌💖

I feel like I've learned quite a bit over these past 5 years when it comes to blogging as well as writing in general. This blog was the perfect launch pad for various experiments - in writing, in hosting online events, in giveaways, and much more - and I continue to learn what types of posts work better than others. There was a small period where I focused really hard on trying to make money from this blog, but that never really panned out, so I gracefully bowed out and stopped featuring sponsors on my blog and paying to be sponsored on other blogs.

One thing I'm proud to say is that whether I was publishing posts in an attempt to earn money, to try and increase traffic, or just for the fun of gushing about the things I'm passionate about, every single post I've written and posted on this blog has been a joy to write. After all, there would be no point if writing these posts wasn't any fun. Even when I had these other goals in mind, they were never the primary motivation behind my posts; I blog on The Written Word(s) because it's fun, and because I want to connect with other fellow geeks through my writing and my fandoms and everything else I manage to share 💗

This trip down memory lane was a lot of fun for me, even if looking at my first blog and some of my older posts made me cringe XD I really enjoyed sharing this momentous occasion with you all 😊 As we approach 2019, I'll sign off with the wish for another 5 years of fun, weird, and all-around nerdy posts to come!

As always...

I'll Keep You Guys Posted! 💌