I’m conflicted.
I’m trying to be professional (somewhat) and smart and use this blog as a platform to help build my reader audience, but apparently, I’m only supposed to talk about writing. People will only read if there’s a theme. But can’t my theme just be my life which concerns all aspects with a centralized focus on writing? Don’t get me wrong—I love talking about writing and being a writer and this hair-pulling, wine-gulping journey into self publishing. But it’s not everything. It’s not my entire life. It’s like… 89.7%. But hell, even Hemingway left the desk to enjoy a Mojito from time to time.
Other shit happens.
The question is- do I write about it? THAT, monsieur Hamlet, is the real question. To write about washed wallets and the existence of Scissorhand penises (which is one of the top searches for this site you weirdos!)and quirky friends getting married—does that hurt my mission into being a successful indie author? I’d like to think no, it doesn’t, but everything I’m reading tells me I’m doing this wrong. This needs to be a site dedicated solely to this process. AND THAT’S IT. Otherwise I’m lying to my fans. Heh. I think the part I like most about that is they assume I have fans. Awesome.
Although, there is that one person who gave me five star reviews on both my books and turned a somewhat crappy day into THE BEST ONE EVER. I wish I could find her (him?) and send a gift basket or something. Just to say thanks. They even titled their review post on POM that I need to hurry up and write faster. Aw! *tear* My heart—and confidence—quadrupled in size. Suck on that, Grinch.
I don’t even know if she knows this blog exists. Maybe. If she’s like me and stalks the authors she likes. If that’s the case, she only had luck if she checked POM’s bio page because I listed my blog address wrong on my first copy of EFH. Of course. I also listed my email wrong in 2009 when I was trying to submit my then novel to print publishers. But hiccups happen. People fall. And hopefully, if it didn’t leave them a paraplegic, they’ll get back up again. It’s all a learning process, right? But without solid instruction how do you know which direction to go? Unless it’s a fact, it’s just someone’s opinion.
I checked out Twitter and had a mild panic attack. I got through adding ten celebrity contacts before closing out the window and leaving my desk. Too much. It’s too much. But the book I’m reading said I have to be a on there. There and google plus and have a facebook author page (which I’ve already started. High five on being productive). But holy shit social media has taken over. And I mostly use my computer for word and minesweeper. Eeek! How am I going to navigate this tsunami with only a bitch-sized oar? For real. I’m about to capsize. But at least I can still write about it on this blog, if, of course, it pertains to writing. Because according to “experts,” I should only write about writing. Otherwise I’m a liar. A misleading, no-themed, poorly written plat formed liar.
*sigh*
What do you think?
Did you set out to write a blog to inspire other indie-wanna-be-writers? Or is the blog to showcase your writing in order to encourage people to read your books?
Rules are for the mediocre. Rules are made so people who can’t think for themselves have some kind of path. Rules are not for you (well some rules, like the ones that could land you in jail if you don’t follow them). Write about life, because it is a wonderful journey, filled with wonder, excitement, challenges, and darned funny things!
Keep doing what you do best–make us look at things in a different way–and make us laugh!
I did thing in slow, baby steps, but then that’s how I do everything which is why Indie’s who have been published a year or two sell more than me. Keep that in ind before you take my advice.
I had a “random” blog on Myspace for years that had my art, writing, photos, etc all in it. Then after book #2 came out – or maybe it was 3. I’m too lazy to look (I only put out one book a year – more of my slowness) I finally made an author blog and posted on the topics of vampires, my writing, vampire/paranormal related stuff, writing stuff, indy stuff, etc. and kept my other blog for everything else. then Mysapce died and I moved it to wordpress too. I had actually joined twitter before I started writing, but it wasn’t until book 2 was coming out that I started to do anything with it (and I still don;t do very much except link everything like wordpress to post automatically) – it’s too noisy for me to deal with – like everyone in a room all shouting, and though I have some insane number of followers, 99% are fellow authors, not readers, who are busy selling their products, not buying mine. i find twitter to be a bit of a waste of time, personally, and I haven’t had much success with it. I also do the FB author page, but since FB redid things so that almost no one sees your posts, it becomes almost a moot point. (I didn’t add it until book 4 was out). Most of the likes are from those lovely “like my page and I’ll like yours” events.
As I said on another board, most of the time we’re all like a bunch of knife salesmen running around at a salesman’s convention trying to sell kitchen knives to one another because none of us can find the customers, and I think that’s where we are making our mistakes. We need the customers to find us instead of us looking for them. How? It hurts me clear to my toes to say it, but I guess paid advertising maybe. (I have had some luck with that, though not 1,000 copies type luck, more like 100-200 copies luck) The trouble is everyone is selling advertising and most aren’t worth a dime because they’re doing the same thing we are – their 5,000 twitter followers/facebook followers/email subscribers are all fellow authors who subbed/followed/liked in order to get advertised… There is a 1% of legit advertisers, but there’s such a waiting list – and price tag – that it ends up being beyond us mid to lower list authors and so we’re stuck shouting in the middle of the convention or else walking through the park hawking our wares.
Some day I am going to use all that in a blog post… :p
But anyway, as far as blog content you should just post stuff that your blog readers are interested in. I have heard from many readers that they find the writing stuff boring unless it directly relates to YOUR book (like snippets, excerpts, a moan about the characters not behaving) and writing blogs about generalized writing just attracts fellow writers – again with the knife salesman convention. (why knives? I don’t know. It just fits somehow.) So write what you want 🙂
(I could have just said that and skipped all this, huh?)
and PS – I haven’t bothered with Goggle+ – i have an account goggle gave me automatically, but that’s it.
I had to read this three times and I’m still finding more information every time! Thanks for all this. You totally could write an entire blog post on it. If you do, I’ll dedicate a post specifically to advertise yours because I think a lot of indies are looking for that exact information.