\nOn September 3, 2012, Leslie Marie wrote, …how about a post about WRITING blogs? Just a thought. I’d like to start one but have absolutely no idea what to write. I think my biggest block is just fear of some sort holding me back!<\/i><\/p>\n
I follow only one blog, written by a former student about her unfolding experience in the Peace Corps in Moldova. Before, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d ever heard of Moldova, which used to be part of the Soviet Union and is the poorest country in Europe. Now, I know how warm and friendly people are, how education doesn\u2019t seem to be as highly valued as it might be, how people are forced by poverty to work in other countries, leaving their children behind with other relatives, and on and on. Kerry posts irregularly but frequently, not at all some weeks, several times others. She includes photos and videos and links to articles, but mostly it\u2019s her own fascinating (and well-written!) commentary on her experience. Interestingly, I almost never see any comments. I assume the blog is mostly read by family and friends, and they\u2019re in touch with her in other ways.<\/p>\n
Leslie Marie, I\u2019m not sure if one of your fears is about finding blog readers. The way I started to build an audience was entirely accidental. I was invited to write a message for NaNoWriMo-ers and included the URL for this blog, which was pretty new. My message went live, and – boom! – I had followers. Whenever I speak at a school or a conference I give out information on my blog and website. The numbers continue to build, but slowly. In getting ready to write this post I googled \u201chow to bring traffic to a blog\u201d and found an interesting site. If you hope to attract a big audience, you can google, too. To start, however, you can tell everyone you know about your blog and ask them to spread the word if they like it.<\/p>\n
I also googled \u201cblogs about writing,\u201d and found lists of the most popular sites, whose subscribers number in the thousands. At this moment I have 434 followers, plus, I\u2019m sure, people who check out the site without ever signing up. The other blogs must have such visitors too. From what I read the most popular bloggers guest post on other blogs and include guest posts on theirs. They also have book giveaways. It seems that people can earn money by blogging, which I do not do – except when reading my blog causes you to buy one of my books. Some sites advertise books about writing written by other authors. If a reader clicks or buys, I\u2019m not sure which or possibly both, the blogger gets paid (very little). I didn\u2019t see general advertising on any of the sites I checked out, but some may carry ads and get paid for clicks that result. One of the blogs had a tab through which a visitor could hire him as a freelance blogger or writer, so that may be another source of income. The writing advice seemed useful. None of it – but I didn\u2019t search extensively – made me sputter in outrage.<\/p>\n
For any of you who are thinking about ways to be a writer and still eat while you establish your place in literature, blogging may be part of the picture, but you\u2019ll have to do more research. Social media keep changing. We need to stay up to date.<\/p>\n
I’m proud that many readers of this blog are teenagers and that some are even younger and that some of you post comments and questions. And I\u2019m over the moon that you’re wild about writing.<\/p>\n
I also clicked on some of your blogs. Agnes, you haven\u2019t kept it up, but I think your idea of a blog as a resource for homeschoolers is great. If you continue with it, please let me know and I\u2019ll post the URL, because, as you probably know, a lot of homeschooled kids read this blog. I suspect there would also be interest from other people (such as me) in what it\u2019s like to be homeschooled – homeschooling is entirely different from my school days.<\/p>\n
Agnes, you have a few blogs going, each with a different purpose. That\u2019s terrific, too. You can fool around, try one thing, then another, and another.<\/p>\n
One kind of blog can be about yourself and your life. I checked out the blogs of some fellow kids\u2019 book writers, too, and many of them are chronicles of their days along with insights into the sorts of people they are. A friend suggested that I do that, which in a way is making myself – and yourself – a character, because we can never present our whole selves in all our complexity. We have to decide what aspects of us we want to share. I imagine this kind of blog is similar to writing a memoir. The memoirist becomes a character, someone whose company the reader enjoys.<\/p>\n
And this sort of a blog would be somewhat like journaling if you were writing for more than yourself. Suppose you visit your Aunt Susan and you blog about the day. Well, you want to give your reader an image of your aunt, so you write that you adore or despise her or love her for the first hour until she starts driving you crazy. You say that she wears her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her lipstick is always fading. Is there a brand that sells faint lipstick? you wonder. (You can post photos of her, too.) When you hug her tight you\u2019re surprised again at how thin she is under her big wool sweater. Then she starts questioning you about everything and you\u2019re grateful for her interest until she asks about Nora, your best friend until the two of you fought last week and you really don\u2019t want to talk about that, and you say you don\u2019t want to discuss it and she says, \u201cAll the more reason to get it off your chest,\u201d and you\u2019re wishing she had lost her voice.<\/p>\n
The point is, we want to include as much detail in our blog as we put in our fiction. Blogging is writing, after all.<\/p>\n
This is all amusing and interesting with Aunt Susan, but suppose your thoughts are more hostile than wishing that she\u2019d lost her voice. In your journal, to be read only by you, you might write those angry thoughts. You might let yourself be whiny and resentful. You might wonder why you\u2019re cursed with such a nosy aunt and why she has to heat her house to ninety degrees, and why she can\u2019t cook anything but meatloaf that tastes like shredded cardboard. That\u2019s fine in a private journal. Ranting is one of the joys of journaling. But not in a blog. These things follow us for decades!<\/p>\n
(One of the joys of writing fiction is that we can make a character whiny, and no one will connect the character with us.)<\/p>\n
And remember that when you post, you are publishing. A blog is a form of e-publishing.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019ve scared you silly, I think blogging is very worth doing if you\u2019re careful.<\/p>\n
In addition to writing about your life in general, you can:<\/p>\n
\u2219 pick a single aspect of your life to blog about, like public or private or home school or babysitting or your writing;<\/p>\n
\u2219 take a journalistic approach and report on doings that interest you;<\/p>\n
\u2219 blog about the news and present your own take on events;<\/p>\n
\u2219 have friends write guest posts;<\/p>\n
\u2219 present interviews of interesting people in your life;<\/p>\n
\u2219 write a how-to, how to make pie crust from scratch, how to paint with watercolors, whatever;<\/p>\n
\u2219 combine all the above.<\/p>\n
Like Agnes, I chose to blog about a subject I know well, and my blog is a kind of how-to about writing. I\u2019m very aware of you blog readers out there in cyberspace, so I set a tone, which I hope is friendly, encouraging, down to earth, funny. The blog does create a version of me as a character. I\u2019m friendly, etc., in real life, too – but not always.<\/p>\n
I aim for clarity and usefulness. I want you to be able to put my thoughts to work in your stories. If I\u2019m ever less than clear I would welcome being told.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what I would have done if you hadn\u2019t started asking questions. I could have written about what I was grappling with week-to-week in my writing, but I wouldn\u2019t have thought of all the topics you\u2019ve raised. So I\u2019m grateful. If you comment a few times I start to feel that I know you a little. E. S. Ivy, to single you out, I think of you as supremely helpful and supportive. You\u2019re not the only one who helps, though. One of the things I love about the blog is the aid many of you give other writers against the confusion that sometimes afflicts us all.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the frequency of your blog. If you\u2019re collecting an audience you don\u2019t want to disappoint them by dropping out of sight for six weeks. Some people post daily, some weekly, and some when the fancy strikes – but I don\u2019t think bloggers in the last group are concentrating on readers. As you all know, I post weekly. If I have to skip a week I give you advance warning.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s length. Some who post every day deliver short bursts. Others write lengthy daily posts; I don\u2019t know how they find the time. I feel I want to give you your money\u2019s worth (hah!), so my posts are substantial and I\u2019m not satisfied until I fill two single-spaced pages and start a third (this post is exceedingly long).<\/p>\n
Last: prompts. Naturally not every blog offers prompts, but I do, because what\u2019s a writing blog without exercises? And I love writing them. How do I do it? Well, I consider the problem of the blog, in this case blogging itself. I’ll do it now, to demonstrate. First, what\u2019s inside this post that I can use? Hmm… Aunt Susan! Maybe Nora, too. Where can I find conflict?<\/p>\n
And I think about the blog topic itself, in this case blogs. What can I do with that directly? And with the possibility of trouble from exposing oneself unguardedly online?<\/p>\n
Here goes. These are the prompts I came up with:<\/p>\n
\u2219 Whether or not you actually set up an online blog, write a post for three different kinds of blogs.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Write a story about your main character Madison and her Aunt Susan. Create an argument. Resolve it happily or not. Have best friend Nora come up.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Madison blogs about the confrontation with Aunt Susan. She\u2019s careful not to write anything that will hurt anyone, or so she thinks, but Nora reads the post and reads between the lines, too. Write Madison\u2019s post and what follows from Nora. Again, resolve it happily, or not.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Madison applies to a music school (or starship school or unicorn training school) she desperately wants to get into. Her audition goes brilliantly well, or so she thinks until the school rejects her. She\u2019s furious and posts her rage on the blog, suggesting that the school\u2019s admission policies are rigged. Write how this post changes her life.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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