erastes

Thank you to those who suggested this post's subject. This will be a purely informal meme that I'll do one at a time as the inspiration strikes!

I have mixed views about blogging. Everyone does it. Some writers just Blog About Subjects (like I'm doing here) and nothing else, and frankly that gets a little dull for me. I don't always want to be preached at by other writers. HOW TO WRITE or HOW TO PUBLISH yes, some of it is useful, but if I actually wanted to know any of the "how to"s I'd do a google search and read someone with a bit more clout* than someone like me.

Perhaps it's because I'm from a Livejournal blogging environment, where the "journal" aspect was important, rather than the Blogger world where Blogging means "tell the world something interesting." I started to follow people on Livejournal because they were either writers or did fun things like dear McTabby who used to (probably still does) collect not-meaning-to-be-but-were-humorous summaries of Potterfics. But the people I stuck with were the people who had more stuff going on than "I'm writing, I've written).

I think—and I may be wrong here—that you connect more with a potential reader if you chat about your life a bit. I probably do it too much. But writing isn't a very interesting thing for others, half the time. They don't want to hear how you've been wasting your day trying to get connected or how you wrote 1k words and are "quite pleased with them" – can you imagine how boring it would be for 80k words? That's 80 posts of boringness.

I try to keep my writing posts down to either a. amusing stuffs like my Chaucerese moment the other day when I found this sentence in my WIP: "Nash wasn't in the galley, it was emptyte of stew with a grin." or the "Adventures in Editing" series. And landmark announcements, OBVIOUSLY. if people are hanging around here to find out when the next morbid angst fest is out, then reading about me whining about Life With Dad and never mentioning the release or sales to publishers would be a bit annoying for them.

That being said, I do have quite a lot of "expert witnesses" on my Livejournal feed—not as many as I used to. But the most useful and one that I'll take the time to read every single time she blogs is an agent who would never represent me. Rachelle Gardner. She's an agent who represents Christian authors but her publishing, editing and writing advice is absolutely spot on. It shows how good she is, by the number of people who comment there, and when she can she does interact with people, another thing I think is vital. So many "experts" just spew forth with their perceived knowledge and then promptly ignore everyone who makes them popular. Some people don't even allow comments, for gawd's sake. "Oh I don't like spam" they say. There are methods you can put in place to prevent spam. "I get nasty comments" ditto. If you don't let people talk to you, why do you think they are going to want to read your books?

If you can, and while you have the time, and no-one's banging on your door to ask you to open this supermarket or come and peruse the cast for the latest movie adaptation of your work, always answer your commenters. I try—TRY, I SAID—to reply to every email and to every comment, even one that says "congratulations."

As for building "platform" – I think it CAN be done. But you have to come up with a good gimmick and be good at it!

*clout: influence

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