Because I started a blog – 10 years as an accidental citizen of cyberspace

This time a decade ago, I was starting a blog.

I was rather surprised to be doing it.

I was not an online person. I did not tweet or Facebook. The internet hardly touched my daily life. I was fully and gainfully occupied without it. It might as well have been a separate and mythical dimension, like hyperspace.

But on a wet evening in February 2009, I was with a friend who had a worldwide reputation in his creative niche. He ran this thriving empire through the ether, from five well-visited blogs.

When he said ‘let’s make you a blog’, I said yes.

I was suspicious of the blog thing, because I am never an early adopter (see above) and also because I disliked the word ‘blog’. (Still do, if I think about it.) But I’d just come out of a mind-whirling experience (you’ll know this if you’ve read Not Quite Lost).

My blog helped complete the transformation.

Before the blog, I was an author in limbo. Skip this paragraph if you know my origin story, but in 2009 I’d just found an agent for my first novel. Before that, I’d ghostwritten novels for other people. Now I hoped I’d be published as me and start my proper career at last.

Alas, publishers wanted New Real Me to be like Old Ghostwriter Me because that was profitable. (Psst…. if you want to be like Ghostwriter Me, you might like my professional course )

And so I remained, both published and not; an author but not really – unless I denied my own creative drive.

That changed when I became a blogger.

• On my blog, I could be whoever I wanted, and I would decide who that was.
• On my blog, I did not have to wait for anybody’s permission.
• Once I had a blog, I had a place to invite people to, a room of my own, a gallery to say who I was. I could go to other blogs and chat – anyone’s I liked.

Through my blog, I made many friends. I grew confident in my own aesthetic judgement as a publisher. I gained the confidence to publish books on writing, my novels and to vary my genres because I could bring readers along on the journey. (Contemporary fiction, speculative fiction, travel diaries… what next? Whatever I like.)

Bloggers have a gung-ho have-a-go mentality.

Because of this, I discovered I could speak on podcasts without microscripting everything first. As I am a fanatical polisher and editor, speaking off the cuff was squarely in my discomfit zone. Eek! Spontaneity! But bloggers feel the fear and do it anyway. This became professional speaking and teaching gigs both in indie world and beyond. Which I discovered I rather enjoyed.

So this blogging anniversary is significant. A marker of big life changes.

Now in 2019, is blogging still as powerful for authors starting now?

Maybe, maybe not. We still need ways to gather readers and discover common ground, but I think much of this now happens in the speedy, flitty public spaces such as Twitter and Facebook. I think blogs are still read because subscriber numbers are still growing (thank you, guys!) but the commenting is no longer as fervent – if I look back at old posts I’m astonished to see hundreds of comments on one topic, which now seems inconceivable. I feel authors still need a website as a home base and a blog to show they’re alive, but the more settled communication now happens in email newsletters (psst … here’s mine).

(And is that a new book you see there? Indeed it is. Hop onto the link to find out, straight from the horse’s mouth.)

What do I expect in another ten years? I have no idea. I’m not a goal setter, except for individual projects where my goal is simply to finish them well.

I could never answer that question in job interviews. ‘Where do you see yourself in x years?’ A truthful answer would betray that I hoped to have graduated far beyond their job, doing something that was much more ME. Though I couldn’t have said for sure what that was.

Now, though, I’d say that in another x years I hope to be doing this, or something like it, and doing it better, and finding other related activities I can add around the edges.

I’ve found what I was looking for. Creative integrity, confidence and independence.

Which I think shows that 10 years of blogging has been a jolly good move.

Do you blog? How long have you blogged for? If you’ve been blogging for a while, have you noticed any general trends? What has it brought you?

How much time should writers spend blogging and building websites?

I’ve had a question from Tina L McWilliams: Besides Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc, a website is obviously essential. But what type? Some writers have simple ones, with their books, an author biography and so forth. Others – you and Joanna Penn included – have ‘education’ sites. Which I love, and return to regularly. (Thanks! Ed) So, could you discuss the importance and the time involved with both?

Oh my, do I have websites – here, here, here and of course right here. That’s four web homes. (I’ll explain why later, but first:)

Why have them at all?

If you’ve got Twitter, Facebook, G+, you’re certainly making good connections. But you’re fitting a limited format with little room to customise. You need a place to invite folks to when they want to know more.

Also, you control your website’s destiny. A social medium might disappear – or your crowd might (MySpace, anyone?). But your site is yours.

Quick detour – should your site be self-hosted? I’ve blogged about this here and here, including the importance of your own URL. (I’ll be talking about that later.)

How extensive does the site have to be?

If the site’s raison d’etre is to tell people who you are, you don’t need more than a few static pages – about you, your books, contact details. Perhaps a page of upcoming events if you do a lot of these (I don’t so I use social media for this). And voila: a website.

If you add a blog, you get noticed more. Search engines favour sites that are frequently updated. Human visitors like to see they’re on the blog of a person who regularly shows up, and notices when new folks call. There are a lot of dead, forgotten sites out there, so you need to make your site look alive.

Should you blog about writing and publishing?

Honestly? The ether is choked with sites about writing and publishing.

Here’s a reason not to: being distinctive If you write straightforward posts about ‘show not tell’ you might find it hard to be noticed – and that’s one of our goals, right? So your posts need to be individual. A lot of writers blog about their lessons and mishaps on their writing journey, so you might find it hard to reach further than immediate friends.

Here’s a reason to: getting your material shared If the content is useful or strikes a chord, it’s more likely to be shared. Certainly a lot of people want to learn about writing and publishing. And you might win fans for your gloriously whacky voice (like Chuck Wendig).

But consider this:

Who do you want your content shared with?

Most authors who blog about writing will only reach other writers. That’s fine for me because writing tuition is part of what I do (but it’s not everything – see below). If you’re blogging to help people develop a taste for your fiction? You might be better choosing something else:

• your issues, if your fiction is issues based
• your historical period if appropriate
• other books in your niche
• host other authors (like Jane Davis), campaign for better recognition for indie authors (like Paul Sean Grieve), start a blog series like David Abrams on The Quivering Pen with My First Time or me with The Undercover Soundtrack.

Blogging to promote your fiction? The dilemma for literary authors

I still haven’t sussed this myself. Partly this is because my kind of fiction doesn’t suggest bloggable ‘topics’. One book might deal with, say, musicians, reincarnation and despair (My Memories of a Future Life). Another might feature repressive regimes and ruined country houses (Lifeform Three).

Even so, those aren’t really my ‘subjects’. I can write the odd guest post about them, but not regular blogs. Ever Rest and my embryonic ideas are different again. My signature, if I have one, is thematic: ideas of the soul and memory, conditions of haunting. I have only realised this as I roam about in Novel 3. I could blog about those themes, but it might discharge my need to explore them in the books.

So subject and issues blogging isn’t going to work for me. But it might be good for you.

Make it regular

Your blog needs to look current. So make blogging a regular appointment. Include a calendar so visitors can see the pattern. A list of previous or popular posts will tempt them to stay longer. The longer people stay on your site, the better.

How frequently should you blog?

As often as you find manageable. Experts say that for SEO significance it should be several times a week, but that might exhaust most of us. And think of it from the reader’s perspective. How much time do you have to read blogs, even the ones you love? Once a week is probably plenty to keep you on the radar.

Which brings me to…  what I do and how much time I spend. 

Why do I have so many sites? 

It was an accident, but it seems to work. Each site has a distinct purpose, and they’re all connected to one hub and to each other.

Nail Your Novel

This one you’re reading is my original site. More here about how it started, where you can also see charming screenshots of how my blogs looked in 2011 (eek!).

Post frequency: I put up a writing/publishing post once a week plus a trailer for The Undercover Soundtrack. Plus signposts if I’ve got a guest spot or devilishly exciting news like a launch. Overall, at least 2 posts a week.

Time taken: I can’t just slap a post out. I spend at least 5 hours of cogitating, checking examples to make sure I’m not making idiotic assumptions, finding pics. You don’t have to spend as long if that’s not your style. Later there are comments to answer, shares to acknowledge and other networking to do. Every few months I might tweak the sidebar icons, so that’s another occasional hour or two. I reckon my blog swallows a full day a week – at least. (Is that shocking?)

My Memories of a Future Life and The Undercover Soundtrack

Post frequency: twice a week. One trailer to introduce my guest, written by me. One Soundtrack post. Although I don’t write these, they take time behind the scenes. I book guests well in advance (as you’ll know if you’ve featured!). When posts come in, I read them, write back with praise (of course!) and quite often ask for tweaks if I think this would make them fit the format better.

Time taken: about 2 hours per week, depending on resubmissions.

How it started: I’d built a blog for writers, but it wasn’t designed for introducing my fiction. When I launched my novel, I worked out a separate profile-building strategy and wrote this post full of bold plans. I reread it just now and added updates for what lasted and what proved daft or impossible to sustain. Mostly the latter. You might find it amusing.

Another reason to have a separate site was to claim the URL. There are several reasons:

• Easier for readers to find in a Google search
• A handy and sensible URL to put on business cards
• Allowed me to create a separate site with artwork in the novel’s livery (if I went self-hosted again I could have done this without making a separate site, but that would have been too disruptive)
• I can transfer it if I want

Roz Morris, author

I got this by accident. I broke the original Nail Your Novel site, so tried WordPress hosting. I found I’d been given a blog called RozMorris, which sat idle before I realised it even existed. Then I decided to use it as a hub for the others.

Time taken: a few hours to set up introductory pages. I’ve added other material gradually as I write it for other purposes – perhaps 20-30 minutes at a time.

Updating when a new book launches I set aside a few hours to add a new page, update pics and the main header, then all the versions of it on my newsletter head, FB page, blog head and sidebar, G+, Twitter biography… I’ve got a master list in my production schedule so I don’t miss anything.

Lifeform Three

This is a separate site with its own URL, knitted into the others.

Time taken: like the main author site above.

So many sites!

I did warn you. If I was starting now, I’d have one blog and one author site for everything else. But The Undercover Soundtrack became its own entity, and I couldn’t graft Lifeform Three on without breaking it. I also couldn’t leave Lifeform Three as a poor cousin with no presence of its own.

 

So my web-web is like a house that’s been extended and extended as times change and the family grows. I don’t doubt it looks messy to purists, and especially when explained here. I’m anticipating comments of horror. However, I don’t think readers mind if the navigation is clear. I doubt they notice the different URLs. But they would certainly baulk if they had to learn a different visual grammar each time. Even though the artwork on each site is different, it follows the same core design so they find what they want quickly.

And yes, apologies. This post is a tad late. Because sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.

Thanks for the blogging pic, Mike Licht of Notions Capital.com 

 

NEWS I’m thrilled to announce I’m teaching a Guardian Masterclass in advanced self-editing techniques for fiction writers. Of course, London might not be a manageable distance for you, but if it is, here’s where to find out more. And … psst … it’s one of the many good things that have happened because once upon a time, I started a blog.

Do you have a blog, a website or both? How much time do you spend on them? Do you want to suggest a way for me to streamline mine? Tell me in the comments!

Writing: a journey in music – guest post at Helen Hollick

You may recognise Helen Hollick as a recent guest on The Red Blog, where she stirred up a storm with raging seas and black-hearted doings, all devised with the music of Mike Oldfield, among others. She’s also a bestselling author who’s hit major charts with her pirate novels, so that’s probably a better reason why you might know her.

After she guested for me, she was curious to find out more about how I use music and how I developed the idea of The Undercover Soundtrack into a blog. Especially as it’s been going for more than two years now – and contributors are now lined up into July!

Some of you NYN old-timers might have heard this tale before, but in case you haven’t, or you want a brief intro to my fiction, or you want to see where Helen lives on line, head over to her blog …

Our friends electric – writing bloggers rock! My post at AE

Are you fed up with established, old-school-published writers complaining about self-publishing bloggers in the national press? I think it’s time we celebrated the well-informed, curious, generous, adventurous, innovative, pioneering, rule-busting community we’ve built with all our blogs, websites, podcasts, Facebook groups etc. If you think so too, come over to Authors Electric, where I’m posting today, and say ‘aye’.

(Or if that’s a click too far, say it here 🙂 )

Blogging for authors – should you be self-hosted? Part 2: two bloggers who favour self-hosting

Yesterday I discussed why an author might not want to self-host their blog and how to make the best of platform-hosted blogging. But many authors strongly advocate self-hosting – so today I’m going to ask two of them why.

First up is author-entrepreneur Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn. Joanna has built a formidable following among writers who want to take charge of their publishing careers and make the best of what the internet can offer. She also develops multimedia courses and she’s hit the bestseller lists with her two thrillers.

Joanna, why did you chose self-hosting?
I have control over everything – including affiliate sales and plugins that you can’t use on free blogs. Google takes you more seriously so you get better SEO results and rank better on Google.

You use a paid-for theme, don’t you? Why?
I use Thesis, which has SEO design in the back end and is very easy to customise so it looks professional. I model success and all the top blogs are self-hosted and use premium or custom design themes. Why look like a second-rate blog?

Is self-hosting and/or using a paid-for theme more hassle? Do you need to be more tech literate?
I have Joel the Blog Tech guy as help but once the site is set up, the back end is the same as WordPress. So no, you don’t have to be tech literate.

How much does this all cost you?
My hosting is less than USD $10 per month, my premium theme was USD $70.

How much do novel-writers need to worry about search engine optimisation (SEO) and what key things should they do?
You need basic SEO – good site design, so that spiders can crawl you. Free themes have a particular SEO rating and my first blog was really crappy for this until I learned about it. Then you should use an SEO plugin. I use All-in-One SEO. Also you should use consistent keywords for your niche and have a lot of relevant content.

My second self-hosted blogger is Jane Friedman, web editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review. Jane is a former publisher at Writer’s Digest and a prolific and respected speaker on writing, publishing, and the future of media. Her expertise has been featured by sources such as NPR’s Morning Edition, Publishers Weekly, GalleyCat, PBS, The Huffington Post, and Mr. Media. She has consulted with a range of nonprofits, businesses, and creative professionals, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Creative Work Fund, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

Jane, prevailing wisdom seems to be that self-hosted is always better. Why is this?
Because not self-hosting means:

• You’ll have a weaker functioning site overall (customisation is usually quite limited)
• You rarely have access to advanced analytics unless you’re allowed to install Google Analytics (which can be important, see below)
• You’re not fully in control of what happens to your site. Over time, services ARE discontinued, bought, changed, etc.

Are these considerations relevant to novelists?
If you’re planning to be a novelist for life, yes. You should be concerned about the long-term potential, growth, and stability of your site.

Whether self-hosted or not, why might authors use a paid-for or upgraded theme – apart from being able to look distinctive? How much does it generally cost?
The cost is very little (generally less than USD $100), given that a premium theme offers robust or improved functionality, as well as better looks (and often better readability). Also, premium themes generally have better SEO tools.

How much do novelists need to worry about SEO? Do readers really find them through Google searches?
If readers buy your book, or hear about your book through any medium, they might be likely to google your name – in which case, your site should be easily found. Often, you don’t have to ‘worry’ about SEO for this to happen as long as your site meets basic standards (usually the case with any premium-theme sites) and you don’t have an exceptionally common name.

I like to say that if no one can find you through Google, it’s like you don’t exist.

Is Google all there is to SEO? What key things should writers do to increase visibility?
Not exactly, but Google is 70% of the search market. The best thing to do is to use a premium theme that focuses on SEO, which will help ensure your site is looking its best when search engine crawlers visit.

This is my SEO strategy – how does it look to you? I write attention-grabbing headlines with key words, and use plenty of tags, including my name, my book titles and keywords for my subject area (in this case ‘writing a novel’).
This looks fine! There are other steps, such as making sure your site’s meta title, meta description, and meta tags are appropriate for the type of reader you’re trying to attract. These things are also adjustable on a post-by-post basis if you’re blogging. When you get a premium theme focused on SEO, generally these fields are available for you to adjust as needed. It helps you customise what exactly appears when your single posts (or when your site) comes up in Google search (site title, site description, brief description of post, etc).

How can writers check how well their measures are working?
You can tell whether your efforts are working if you improve your search ranking for your name or book titles (how high in the listings you appear), and/or if you see your organic search results increase—something you can watch, over time, in Google Analytics.

……

Thanks Joanna and Jane – and thanks also to Catherine Ryan Howard for helping me argue for platform-hosted blogs yesterday.

Anything to add? Cautionary tales, theories…. has your mind been changed by anything you’ve read here? I’m sticking with WordPress hosting for now, but Jane’s suggestions have sent me back to my site descriptions to make them work harder at grabbing readers. If you’re going to do anything new, tell me in the comments!

If you’re new to blogging and want some basics, you might find this post of mine helpful – How I get time to blog as well as write  and Your new writing blog: avoid these faux-pas.

If you are thinking of upgrading to a bespoke theme, you might like this by Dan Blank – How I redesigned my website.

Joanna has scores of helpful posts about blogging – starting here. (And we’ve joined forces to create a multimedia course How To Write A Novel. More than 4 hours of video and audio with 86-page transcription and slides)

Blogging – should authors go self-hosted or not? Part 1: two bloggers who don’t

You must self-host. You mustn’t use an off-the-peg theme. You mustn’t, on pain of ethernal damnation, have links in blue Times Roman.

There’s a lot of strident advice about blogging. Even that remark about blue Times Roman came from serious advice on a high-profile site trying to tell quivering newbies what they should do. Perhaps blue links matter in some quarters, but what matters to an author who wants to connect with readers? Should you be spending money on hosting, and on customised, SEO-friendly blog themes?

Today and tomorrow I’m going to examine both sides of the electric fence. Four bloggers, evenly split between self-hosted and not. On the ‘not’ side are me and Catherine Ryan Howard. On the self-hosting side are writer and author entrepreneur Joanna Penn and digital publishing guru Jane Friedman.

In a way I speak from both sides. I started with a self-hosted blog, when a friend insisted I camp out in a corner of his webspace (because he felt it was infra dig to be anything but self-hosted). And it didn’t go well. More about that in a moment.

You’ve lost me already. What does all this mean?

Quick tutorial – your blog is kept on a server so anyone in the world can read it and lots of people can access it at the same time. With self-hosting, you pay for disk space (also known as a domain) and you can put whatever you like on it – blog software of your choice, websites, pay buttons, video, anything. With platform-hosted, like WordPress.com and Blogger, your files are kept by WordPress and Blogger, you can’t customise the design or have pay buttons or video – although paid upgrades will allow some features. It’s like the difference between renting a house – with landlord’s furniture and rules – and owning the whole space outright.

Just to confuse you, there’s a version of WordPress for use on self-hosted blogs – WordPress.org.

With freedom comes responsibility

The biggest difference between the two is, obviously, freedom. This can go rather wrong. When I was self-hosted, I imported a cool plugin that broke my entire blog. I would never have got up again if not for (another) expert friend who was prepared to poke around the upper, scary database levels and unravel the damage. (Note to self: self-hosting is not for the insanely curious.)

The other problem is security. Most blogging systems are open source – which means the code is available for anyone to read, and hackers can find the loopholes easily. WordPress.com and Blogger don’t let you change anything that threatens security, but on self-hosted blogs there are no padlocks. My self-hosted blog got hacked – which might or might not have been because I was sharing with a friend of less secure habits. But after the stress of that I decided I was out of my depth and didn’t have time to sort out software and security headaches. I rebooted on WordPress.com, which has been able to do everything I need.

Get  customising

Obviously you don’t want your blog to look like everyone else’s, but there are only a limited number of visual templates (themes). However, there’s a lot you can do to customise. My blogs all use the same template, Fusion, which I’ve tweaked with my own headers and logos. You can buy upgrades to let you customise even more, but everything I’ve done is free.

Fusion tweaked for my main author site

…and for my novel’s blog

But themes aren’t just about the blog’s appearance. Themes also allow you to draw in new readers through the hocus-pocus of SEO – search engine optimisation.

SEO

Here, the paid-for themes have an advantage as they are designed to worm their way more effectively into search pathways. Tomorrow I’ll discuss this in more detail with Jane and Joanna, but there are ways you can optimise your free non-self-hosted blog:

• use attention-grabbing headlines with key words
• optimise post URLs – Google looks at post URLs, so I make sure mine show the headline, not the post date or number. Your blog will probably have an option for changing this
• use plenty of tags – you’ll see my posts all have shoals of tags, including my name, my book titles, and general tags like ‘write a novel’. Those tags are not for you, reading this page – you already know every post is related to writing novels. Those tags are for Google. Make sure each post contains the keywords for the specific post and the keywords for your blog in general.

Buy a URL

I also bought my own general blog URL and pointed it to the free one. The rationale is that when someone hears about you they search for you.com or yourbook.com. (It’s usually .com they plump for first, even if you’re as English as Earl Grey tea). So the actual web address of this blog is nailyournovel.wordpress.com but for a few dollars I bought nailyournovel.com and through a very easy process, pointed it at this blog. I did it for My Memories of a Future Life too.

Over to Catherine

Anyway, I promised you a second opinion on platform-hosted blogs, so here’s Catherine Ryan Howard, of the indefatigable and unfatiguable Catherine, Caffeinated…

How did you start?

‘I started off with Blogger.com, but I always felt there was something about Blogger templates that said ‘amateur’. This was back in late 2009 so chances are they’ve improved since then but when I went to WordPress, it felt like a whole new level of professionalism and the choice of themes was just fantastic. I think it’s a credit to WordPress that I’ve had enquiries about who designed my blog – people think it’s been done professionally but it’s a free WordPress theme (Bueno) I love how easy WordPress.com blogs are to use, how easy it is to integrate them with the rest of your online activities (Twitter, Facebook, etc) And my all-time fave WP feature is their custom menu, which enables you to link to external sites (or wherever you like) from the menu at the top. For example, on top of my blog I have a ‘newsletter’ tab, and when you click it on it, you’re brought to the MailChimp sign up form.’

Is there anything you pay for?

‘The only thing I pay for is the domain upgrade, i.e. www.catherineryanhoward.com instead of www.catherineryanhoward.wordpress.com.’

What limitations are there on a WordPress-hosted blog?

‘Paypal buttons is the big thing – you can’t sell anything on your WP blog although you can have a donate button.’ (editor’s ahem!… it’s possible to fudge it – see the How To Write A Novel course in my sidebar…)

‘Also a lot of external widgets don’t work. BUT I think this is a tiny price to pay for such a great, easy service that lets me have a professional home online for very little cost.’

What about SEO?

‘I don’t worry about SEO at all. Not one tiny bit. Maybe I should, but I’m quite happy with the way things are for me and my blog at the moment. The only thing I want – and I have it – is for my blog to be the first result when people google my name. I think if your blog is the core of your business, you should worry about things like that. But for a writer, their books are the core – or should be, anyway.’

Roz again… I couldn’t agree more. So here are my tips for making the most of a non-self-hosted blog, if we can use such a horrible term…

1.  Tag your posts with an eye on SEO
2. Get your own URL
3. Check your URLs show your post headline, not just a date or a post number
4. Find a theme that you can shape to look distinctive (so people really feel it’s your online home)
5. Remember your online presence isn’t just a blog – you reach much further if you use social media as well.

If you blog, what platform do you use and why? Do you have any thoughts on self-hosted versus platform hosted? Share in the comments…. and come back tomorrow when Jane Friedman and Joanna Penn give their reasons for self-hosting.

The first edition of my newsletter is out now, including useful links and snippets about the next Nail Your Novel book!  You can read it here and you can add your name to the mailing list here.

How to write great guest posts about your book – keep your stories about your stories

‘Do you know how I came up with the new ending for my book?’ said my client. ‘I dreamed it.’ She went on to describe a wonky version of what finally went into the draft I was reading.

‘Keep this anecdote,’ I said. ‘Write it down.’

‘Pah it’s just a dream,’ she said. ‘I was also inspired by this strange thing that happened to a friend…’

‘Write that down too,’ I said.

She thought I was mad, and no doubt you do too. But there will come a time when you will be scratching for things to say about your book and you need something beyond a story summary or a sketch of your main characters.

Awkward moments

I first realised this years ago at a friend’s book launch. I’d just finished My Memories of a Future Life and I got chatting to a publisher. I gave my prepared spiel and he nodded eagerly, wanting more. I’d run out of pitch, so I bumbled on about my favourite bits, aware that I was getting obscure, but I was so mired in the book I couldn’t see it as an outsider. What I needed was a crisp anecdote or two to keep him relating to it – perhaps about its influences or what inspired it. (He still asked to see it, though, so no harm done.)

Publicity is a long game of guest posts, interviews and maybe personal appearances. (At the moment, Dave is gearing up for the launch of his Frankenstein book app, and is grappling with interview questions. ‘What on earth do I tell all these people?’ he frequently says to me. ‘I thought it was enough to just write the story.’)

Blah blah blah

There’s only so much you can say about the novel without giving spoilers. And you’re going to be asked the same questions time and again about the writing of it, but that doesn’t mean you have to give the same answers. In fact, you shouldn’t. In each case you might reach a new audience, but the chances are, readers will see you several times before they decide to check you out. The more different – but congruent – stories you can tell about your book, the richer it will seem and the more ways you have to reel readers in. And the less you’ll bore everyone, including yourself.

And people who like stories also like stories about stories. I recently added an ‘inspired by’ anecdote to my Amazon listing for My Memories of a Future Life and sales have trebled. This experimental sample of just one seems to prove somethingorother.

What makes a good story about your story?

The very best are specific but don’t give too much away. It could be

• novels that influenced it
• favourite fictional characters that spurred you to write it
• real-life experiences that fed into it – anything that gives you an insider view of the subject or events
• real-life people who inspired it or helped with research – although be careful of libel
• issues the novel raises

Or it could be something left field, like my series The Undercover Soundtrack on the red blog, where writers tell a tale about their book in the context of music that inspired them while writing.

But thinking of all this stuff – unless someone gives you a specific exercise like my Undercover Soundtracks – is time consuming. And, depending on how complex your novel is, you may not be able to name all its influences at the drop of a hat. I’m still becoming aware of forgotten seeds for both of mine. They emerge by chance in conversations, revisited films and novels I dimly remember. Now I realise I might have a use for these insights, every time I stumble on another, I write it down.

Keep your stories about your stories. You’ll be surprised how easily they’ll slip your mind, but they’re as useful to you as the ideas in the actual novel itself. And you’ll never have enough.

Thanks for the pic Ben Chau

Do you have a tale about your novel? If you can tell it briefly, the floor is yours…

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Your new writing blog: avoid these faux-pas

Last post I discussed fitting blogging into your schedule. Today, I have a list of common problems with new blogs.

No sidebar

You need a sidebar – a narrow margin down the right-hand edge of the page. For all the stuff I’m going to tell you about in the rest of this post. Yes, the right – it’s easier on the eye. And one only. That’s easier too.

No picture of you

Published books include a picture of the author and blogging is even more personal. We want to know what you look like. And not a cartoon or one of those weemee avatars. Don’t be bashful. Use a photograph.

No email

If you’re worried about spam and your blog platform doesn’t offer an easy email form, write your email address so that bots won’t recognise it – see mine in the sidebar.

No other places to find you

If you’re on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Google Plus, put your profiles in the sidebar. Okay, I haven’t featured Google Plus even though I’m on it, but I haven’t a clue what I’m doing there. If you contact me on Google Plus you won’t get any sense out of me. And I keep wanting to call it Circles.

Hidden Twitter handle

Twitter is one of the best ways to share posts. Once I joined, my readership rocketed.

I retweet a lot of posts and like to credit the source, so my followers have the option to follow the original author as well. But I’m less keen to credit if I have to hunt every line of a sidebar to find an ID.

On some blogging platforms, you can include your Twitter handle as part of your username (like I have). And while we’re at it…

Leaving your user name as ‘admin’

Blogs are personal. Even if every post is written by you, readers prefer to see your name, not the default ‘admin’. It’s easy to change if you hunt around in settings for your username. And add your Twitter handle.

Not putting an internal search box

If readers are looking for something, they don’t want to guess where you might have posted about it. Give them a search box.

Not enabling comments

Most blog designs allow comments by default, indeed it’s hard to turn them off. But in the last couple of days I found my way to two new blogs and wanted to let them know I’d enjoyed their posts. Even though they asked in the signoff for comments, there was no way to do so! Make sure comments are enabled.

Not including subscription info

Not everyone wants to type your URL each time, or even come to your site. Lots of people like to keep up with blogs in a reader or by email. Don’t miss out on them.

Leaving the blog untended

As I said in my previous post, blogs need to look inhabited. If I come across your blog and see you haven’t posted for a month or so, I wonder if you’ve abandoned it.

No one minds if you unplug to get on with other stuff, so long as you let people know you’ll be back. In summer I took time away to finish edits on My Memories of a Future Life, so I left a ‘gone fishing’ notice.

Using hard-to-read designs

Some design themes are over-colourful, or light text on a dark background. These might work well for illustrative blogs, but are murder to read if most of your content is text. The trouble is, they look so tempting. I fell in to this trap when my self-hosted blog got hacked and I moved (long story). I went skipping around the WordPress wardrobe and picked something that looked groovy. Oh it was yummy. It went with my hair. You were all really nice about it too. But a few brave souls pointed out it was a migraine to read. The good news is, it was easy to change.

Next time I’ll look at blog design in more detail, including customising, bought themes and an extremely brief discussion of hosting options.

In the meantime, if you’re a seasoned blogger, what faux-pas did you commit when you started? Are there any you didn’t, but you notice on others?

How I get time to blog as well as write

I’ve had this question from Cindy Richard: I have been toying with starting a blog because I would like to have a platform when I finally finish my novel. I am worried about having the mental energy for it, since I have a full-time job and am deep into writing my first novel. I have a great idea for how to focus my blog and what to write, but I am worried about starting it and then having it fizzle out because I don’t have the energy to give my best. Do you have any suggestions for making it more manageable starting out?

Great question. Here are my tips to make sure your blogging resolution doesn’t end up a sad forgotten thing, like December’s festive trees blowing down a January pavement.

Treat blogging as part of your writing work

You’ve probably got a routine for your writing – or you wouldn’t have got so far with your novel. Carve a little of that off for blogging. You can’t possibly steal more hours from the other things you have to do, so take it from your writing time.

I designate a day a week on which I am allowed to do blogging tasks – including posts, guest posts elsewhere, scheduling Undercover Soundtrack pieces. Even though those are written by guests, they are fiddly to publish. This all takes time and you need to schedule it properly so you make a good job of it.

Write a ton of posts in advance?

It’s not a bad idea to have posts prepared, but some people schedule months of them and leave the blog to fend for itself. I wouldn’t recommend that because when they end you’ll have to interrupt your writing schedule to cue up a load more – and that’s painful. It’s better to get into a regular routine.

If you do cue in advance, be prepared to rejig if you spot a trend you could post about. Often these gain more hits, more readers and more discussion.

Whatever else you do, answer comments ASAP. Blogs have to look alive and responsive – readers like contact and conversations.

Keep blogging time in check

Blogging is addictive. I could spend endless hours on design fiddles, tweaking widgets – as is probably evident in my greedy number of blogs (you’ve already seen this red one, and there’s also my website). It’s even worse when your blog is oh-gosh shiny and new. Aside from answering comments, don’t let yourself do blog stuff on other days.

Prevent blogging burnout

Many people start a blog and then find they run out of ideas. Find something you can genuinely talk about forever and you’ll never run dry. But more importantly…

Short is better

A lot of new bloggers try to cram too much into one post. Posts don’t have to be the definitive, exhaustive essay, unlike articles or reports outside of the blogoverse.

Nor does that make blog posts superficial. You can still be brilliant, useful, provocative, evocative – whatever you like – in 500 words or so.

And computer screens aren’t the easiest medium for reading – another reason why shorter posts are better.

If you think you can split a post in two, nobody minds that. The more times people come back to your blog, the more familiar they get with your blog furniture, your writing voice. That’s why people have favourite newspapers – they know where to find what they want, quickly.

And as I’ve already gone on too long, I’m going to take my own advice. I’ve got a list of fledgling bloggers’ mistakes – but that’s for another post.

In the meantime, tell me – how do you make time for blogging?