I’ve written a lot about blogging in the past couple of weeks, from How To Start A Blog to my 5th Blog-Aversary. So today I thought I’d share some of my favorite blogs.

I do almost all my blog reading through Feedly, an app on my phone. Feedly compiles all my blog reading into one place. You could also subscribe to blogs via email (sign up box in the header of this site!) or keep a bookmark folder, but I’ve found Feedly to be the best option for me. I keep its icon under the “social media” bubble on my phone, so I check it at least as often as Facebook or Twitter, and it’s usually a source of greater enjoyment and education than either of those other media feeds. Feedly is also free, and updates itself frequently (though the website itself tends to be slower to update than the app). I never miss a blog post from my favorite blogs.

Favorite Blogs

I’ve been reading Laura Vanderkam’s blog for years. She writes daily about time management strategies and keeps a perspective of realistic optimism for what it’s possible to accomplish with your 168 hours a week.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before, blogs daily about happiness and good habits. Her insights into both of these subjects are fascinating and occasionally even life-changing.

DIY MFA is, of course, my favorite source for writing-related posts. This past month, I contributed two of those posts: If You Want To Be Productive, Go To Sleep! and 5 Things I Learned at Hippocamp.

I also read The Write Life, another place where multiple writers contribute articles. While I was querying for my novel, I read every post of Chuck Sambuccino’s Guide to Literary Agents blog, and Janet Reid’s Query Shark blog. (Fun fact: Janet Reid just joined the team at New Leaf Literary, my agent’s agency!)

For writing craft, I like Jane Friedman and Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn.

Two of my all-time favorite bloggers, who also engage regularly on this website, are my DIY MFA friend and co-columnist Sara Letourneau, and Kathy Johnson of Catching Happiness. Visit Sara for insight into her creative process and writing life, as well as extensive reviews of fantasy novels; visit Kathy for uplifting stories, poems and photographs about living happily.

Modern Mrs. Darcy is a fantastic lifestyle blogger who, due to her new(ish) podcast What Should I Read Next, has begun to write more frequently about reading. You’ll miss out a little if you read her posts through a feed reader; her website is beautiful.

I also read the Art of Simple‘s blog for posts about parenting and living holistically.

I’m subscribed to more blogs than I’ve listed here, but these are the ones I read almost every day (or however often they post). I love hearing about new blogs, so please share: what are your favorite blogs to follow, and why? 

And finally, this was promised weeks ago: my clip from the Writer’s Read performance of my essay The Gondola Ride. It’s less than 5 minutes, and you’ll get to see me make some pretty strange faces!