22 February 2018

Another Platform

I joined the TODAY Parenting Team last night. It was kind of on a whim, to be honest. I had not been planning to join. I have come across the website before, but I am still choosing not to submit my work to sites that do not offer some form of compensation. Last night, clicking through articles in my news feed landed me on the TODAY website again. I read a little deeper into the process and ended up seeing the platform in a different light.

The Parenting Team is an online community that falls under the umbrella of the TODAY Show; it is free to join and provides an easy, accessible platform for writers. It is not quite the same as writing a piece for someone else's website. It feels more like writing a piece for my own blog without needing the blog. I'll admit, TODAY is still making money through advertising while I make none. However, their platform offers an outlet for my writings that do not fit here (where I write about my adventures in writing) but that I want to share without going through the process of querying to have published. It provides a place for me to share my writings on a variety of topics without having to create and maintain a blog within the niche.

Like I said before, I know I am doing it wrong, but I am going to keep on doing it my way. I don't want to get locked into a niche. I don't want to spend more time maintaining and promoting a website than I do actually writing. I don't even want to be confined to one type of writing – blog posts, articles, short stories, poems, books – I want to write whatever I feel the need and desire to write.

Their writing prompts and challenges even encourage writers to write – which is what prompted me to write my first post over there. I noticed their featured challenge:

Romance After Kids 
We'd love to get your thoughts about keeping love alive post-kids. How do you and your partner make time for each other? How can romance be sustained against a backdrop of sleep deprivation and homework battles? How have you seen your love grow even stronger with the passage of time and the addition of children? Please share your thoughts and feelings in this challenge because we’re all in this together!

So, I wrote up this piece: My Husband and I Still Celebrate Our Moversary.

I am glad I lingered on the TODAY Parenting Team website long enough to give it another thought. It is a fantastic platform for a writer like me.