5 Stories of Bloggers Finding The Blogging Community // Blogger Origins pt. 1!!

Hi, friends! Welcome to my newest feature on the blog, Blogger Origins.

I am way too excited for this post because I don’t think I can ever truly talk about how much I love the blogosphere and all the bloggers that are a part of it. Blogging takes so much time, dedication, and passion, so any chance to promote or show love for my fellow bloggers is a chance I’ll take (psst you can also vote in the Book Blogger Awards right now to show your appreciation for bloggers!).

A combination of my desire to promote bloggers and my curiosity about how people found the blogging community culminated in the creation of a new series on Purely Olivia: Blogger Origins. Essentially, each post in the series will feature a handful of bloggers that have been kind enough to send me a short summary of how and why they started blogging.

My hope with this series is that you can not only find new blogs to follow and enjoy, but that you also might find it as interesting as I do to see how everyone’s blogging journey has come about! What I love is that everyone’s blogging origins are different, but somehow we were all led to connect here, and that’s pretty amazing.

A special thank you to everyone who showed interest in participating in this feature- I honestly didn’t know if anyone would also think it was interesting, but I was so happy with the responses I got, and this is only just a part of them- more are to come in the future. (Side note: if you haven’t yet sent me your story but filled out the survey, then please don’t worry, you can still send me it if you’d like to. I’m publishing them in the order in which I received them!)

The first blogger to be featured Lais, from The Bookish Skies. Lais is a 19-year-old from Brazil who loves YA, Percy Jackson, boybands, and rom-coms. She always writes such focused posts, gives amazing book recommendations, and has definitely been the cause of many a book being added to my TBR.

I’m absolutely in love with all her content, her blog aesthetic and book photography that she often includes in her posts, her very, very kind personality, and the amazing discussions I have with her through the comments of both of our posts. A few of my favorite of her posts are~

• 5 Characters Who Are Too Good for This World, Too Pure
• 5 YA Contemporaries Narrated By Straight Male Characters
• A Trip to My Home Country: Stereotypes (I love this whole feature though!)

Lais’s Blogger Origins Story:

The first blog I ever read was Paper Fury, by Cait. I loved her voice and her recommendations. After a while, I also found out about Twirling Pages, by Xandra and when I went through the comments – albeit I never left any -, I found out about a lot of blogs with similar content – books, writing and lifestyle. Up until that point, I thought the only possibilities for being a part of the bookish online community were to have a bookstagram account or a booktube channel – and I was not interested in either. So finding out about the blogging community felt perfect for me, but there was one obstacle: the language.

I was mostly reading blogs in English, but up until I started blogging, I had never read actual novels in any other language, except for my native one, which is Portuguese. I thought I wouldn’t fit in, but after finding Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books, and realizing there was a huge number of bloggers who were international and blogging in languages that weren’t their native ones, I felt inspired and empowered to create my own.

I blogged on Tumblr at first, which wasn’t ideal, but it allowed me to change my layout as much as I wanted to, which I struggled in other platforms. After a hiatus, I decided to switch to WordPress, which was an amazing choice because it allowed me to interact more with bloggers, generate more engagement as well as find out more blogs too. Even though I still make a lot of grammar mistakes, blogging has also allowed me to improve my English and I am very thankful for how welcoming this community has been to international bloggers like myself.

The next blogger is Grace from Radiate Literary! Radiate Literary is an especially interesting blog because it’s a way for young writers to share their writing, gain feedback, and connect with other writers. Grace is a high school bibliophile who founded this blog and, along with a team, has created this safe space for writers.

Even though I haven’t written anything in quite a while, I was so happy to hear about the existence of this online literary journal in the form of a blog, and I encourage you to check out the FAQs and submissions on the site.

Grace’s Blogger Origin Story:

Hi all! Thanks to Olivia for her work putting together this Blogger Origins project. I’m really excited to be a part and hear from everyone else. I’m Grace, and I sort-of blog at Radiate Literary. I’m a senior in high school and would describe myself as a story-seeker. That element of story-seeking is really what ties together my blogging journey. 

I began blogging in 2015 as a way to share my stories and writing with family and friends. Eventually, I branched out into book blogging and got more plugged into the blogging community (hi, Olivia!). I loved sharing about books but eventually realized my real passion was the writing process, not the reading process.

I kept book blogging for a few more months. It was hard to just drop out because it really does connect you to such a fun community that shares your passion for finding stories. Over those months, I talked to some writing friends and we realized that we didn’t know of any blogs or publications entirely for young writers that focus on helping writers grow their skills. While there were plenty of sites looking for the stand-out unique and perfect piece, we didn’t see many places dedicated to helping writers see the full potential of their piece. That’s where the idea for Radiate Literary started.

 Over the next year, we launched the Radiate Literary Journal. This is a combination blog/journal publication completely run by students ages 13-22 and accepting submissions from young writers. Our editing team provides individual feedback to each submission and looks for potential rather than perfection in each piece. The goal is to connect young writers with a community that appreciates their work. Radiate is similar in ways to the book blogging I’d been doing before (I’m still searching for stories), but it’s also a new experience.

The main way running Radiate has been different from book blogging is that I don’t just create blog posts to share my ideas. Rather, I get to help other writers share their ideas. It’s a lot of connecting with other bloggers and writers to grow the community and spread the vision. It’s been so much fun to work with young writers on their pieces. Young writers like us have so many ideas and so much passion, so being able to come alongside peer writers with support and feedback is incredible. I’ve learned so much throughout the process and it’s really been an amazing journey.

The next blogger origin story is that of Rhiana, from Marshmallow Harmonies. Rhi is a Australian book blogger who loves all YA novels, adores rereads, enjoys Gilmore Girls, and is a generally fantastic person and blogger. There’s so much to love about her and her blog, but one thing that I especially love is that she puts so much personality and heart into all of her posts.

Whether it’s a recommendation post, a review, or a discussion, I’m guaranteed to enjoy whatever she writes and I love every instant I spend on her very lovely blog. Some of my favorite posts include~

• 7 Tropes and Themes You (And I) Love to Read
• Eight Books With Found Families and Friendship Squads That I’m Soft For
• The Boy Who Steals Houses (review)

Rhi’s Blogger Origin Story:

Hi! I’m super excited to be talking about how I got started book blogging, which has been one of the best and simultaneously one of the most stressful decisions of my life! Olivia is so lovely, and I feel honoured to be talking on her blog today as she’s been with me and my blog for a long time!

I started blogging way back in February 2018, but I was just posting general life things (most of those posts are archived now!), as I’d gotten the inspiration from a travel blog I’d kept the year before on a trip with my family. I had no idea about engagement, or followers, or anything like that!! (Yes, mini-Rhi was quite idiotic.) Slowly, and to this day I’m still not sure how, but other people came and looked at my blog….this is the point I finally figured out the best part of blogging – a community.

I’ve always been a bookish person (and I’ve written a post on it!) and so naturally I was drawn to book bloggers. It was in September-ish 2018 that I started posting a little bit of book-related content on my blog, and I loved it so much that in the summer of 2019 (January for me! I’m in Australia :)) I permanently moved to book blogging. The community here is so wonderful and I adore everyone.

The book blogging community also introduced me to fandoms and many other incredible books I love with all my heart – like Six of Crows, The Raven Cycle (I can thank Olivia for that one!), and Red White and Royal Blue just to name a couple! I didn’t find it too hard at all to make… an adjustment of sorts, I guess, from life blogging (which I still do on occasion) to book blogging, as, like I’ve said before, everyone is too kind to me and other bloggers. Thank you for having me Olivia!!

Next is Eryn, a blogger at Love Your Shelf. She is a teenaged bibliophile and not only loves to read, but also listens to a lot of music. In addition to blogging about books, reviewing novels, and participating in book tags, she also runs a very beautiful bookstagram account!

A few of her recent blog posts include~

• The Reading Habits Book Tag
• Melodies
• The Nope Trope Tag

Eryn’s Blogger Origin Story:

To discover how I entered the book community, first, I would like to tell how my love for books came about. In elementary school I had a friend who loved the Harry Potter series and at that time I was obsessed with SpongeBob (still love it). We used to talk about our obsessions all the time but eventually after elementary school, we never really saw each other again but she was the spark that lit my passion for reading.

One day I was in the media center of my middle school and I had the sudden urge to pick up a book and read. That’s when I remembered: Harry Potter! So I picked up the second book (I tried and DNF’d the 1st book in elementary school), The Chamber of Secrets, and started reading it. I still had never read the first book in its entirety till this day. Anyways, I was hooked! I breezed through the rest of the series in a heartbeat. There began my love of reading. Among Harry Potter, other books that got me into reading were The Mysterious Benedicts Society and Kalahari (I still love these books to this day).

Fast forward to 7th or 8th grade, when I had no idea of my taste in books, I started reading Sarah J Maas’ ACOTAR and Throne of Glass. After I read it and enjoyed it, I took to YouTube to look for reviews and see what other people thought and that was my first intro to the book community. After booktube, I found Goodreads and later on, bookstagram and book blogs.

A year later, I decided to start a book blog as an intro to the book community but I was never active on it so I took it down off Wix and another year passed when I made my intro to bookstagram in December of 2019 and have actually kept up with it. It is a lovely community where I can finally find my people so in May of 2020 I moved to WordPress to start my book blog! I love it! It’s fun to make the posts and share my opinions and connect with other book bloggers! I hope to make my entrance to the booktube community soon and connect with even more people! Until, then IG and my blog are my forms of communicating my passion for books.

Finally, the last blogger to be in this post is the amazing Tasya, the blogger behind The Literary Huntress. Tasya is an Indonesian book blogger who not only blogs about what she reads, but also talks about pop culture a lot on her blog (with her Screen Rambles feature). I always enjoy the variety of content she puts out, whether it be a book review, a discussion, or something about life in general.

A few of my favorite posts of hers include~

• Books That I Associate With Important Memories in My Life
• You Asked for Perfect (review)
• Let’s Celebrate the Series Annoucement: PJO vs. HoO Book Tag

Tasya’s Blogger Origin Story:

Hi everyone! My name is Tasya and I’m from Indonesia. I blog at The Literary Huntress, which is mainly a book blog but I occasionally post about other media and things that I enjoy.  

I’ve always loved reading for as long as I could remember but unfortunately, I couldn’t find a lot of people that I could discuss what I read with. I just started using Goodreads around that time and I remember how nice it felt, a whole new world filled with people who love books. We could discuss, rant, and fangirl together, share your thoughts, and also recommend books for each other. No matter what type of books you love, you have a place there. I really like the idea of carving a space for myself in the community, so I decided to create a book blog to share my thoughts and interact more. My blogging journey started in 2013; I didn’t really remember when I first made my blog, but I posted my first book review in December 2013. 

I started out on Blogger at first, as it gives me more control in terms of codes and plugin. The first blogger I found and interacted with was Erika @ Books and Stars, whom I really adored. There were other bloggers, but most of them are not active anymore at this point. Eventually though, I feel like the platform didn’t feel enough, as I find it hard to grow on and find blogs on the platform. Being on Goodreads helped because I found many reviewers also happen to be bloggers and I noticed that everyone seems to be on WordPress. I ended up moving to WordPress in October 2016 and have since met more people! I find it easier to interact with the community since I get notifications so I could respond immediately (or see other’s response to my comment) as well as read blogs I follow, all in one place.  

So yeah that is the story of how my blog started and I’m really happy to find the bookish community, as it is filled with so many wonderful people, all united with our passion for books. Now we also have book twitter, book tumblr, and bookstagram, the community gets even bigger and beautiful than before! I’ve been here for a while, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving anytime soon!

That’s the first five blogger origin stories I have to share today! A very huge thank you to all these wonderful bloggers for sharing their stories with me and taking the time to reflect on their blogging journeys- I know I loved seeing how everyone joined the community. I also loved seeing the love for fellow bloggers and book lovers reflected in all of these stories- a common thread throughout each entry was how wonderful it is to share a passion for reading with others.💛

I really hope you enjoyed this and found it as interesting as I did! I have more submissions to share, so hopefully I can make this a monthly feature in order to share more blogger origin stories. I would have added more in this post, but it’s already fairly long, so I thought I’d just leave it at five.

Thank you very much for reading! I hope you’re all doing well and staying safe.✨

Do you also find it interesting to read about how bloggers found the blogging community? Are there similarities to how you found it? I’d love to talk with you in the comments.

P.S. This is my 200th post to be published on Purely Olivia and it makes me very happy that this milestone is hit with a post that can hopefully promote bloggers :’)

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash >> Credits for the image in my featured image