Blog Away
I have become a great proponent of the blog. To blog you must write after all, and writing is writing, however informal. On a purely professional level, the benefits are many. First, it’s free. It’s also easy. Blogger, Google’s free blogging site, is quick. You can be blogging ten minutes after logging on. If you’ve already got a book you’re promoting, a blog is one way to keep in touch with your readers. Blog about where you’ll be reading, about where you have read, about where you’ve been interviewed. You can have contests to give away free books, and you can interact with your readers through the blog’s message board. Blog’s are also handy if your book has been bought but the publishing date is still a year away. If you start blogging ahead of time, you might be able to generate a little interest in your project before it hits the shelf. I don’t think a blog is going to necessarily make a book a bestseller, but I do think it’s one more valuable tool in a writer’s publicity tool kit.
But I also think the blog is just as important to the unpublished writer. In fact, it may be more important. When you blog you are deciding to be read. It is very important to be read if you want to be a writer, and not just for the paycheck readers generate. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a boy. When I was a teenager, I wrote story after story and showed them to my parents, my teachers, sometimes even my friends. This was a very forgiving audience. I never felt I was trying to communicate something with them. Rather, when I showed them my stories I was merely showing them what I was capable of. They read the stories out of love for me, not the stories themselves.
Then my high school’s principal died during my senior year, and we dedicated our yearbook to him. Since I was editor, it fell to me to write something commemorative to read at the graduation when we presented his widow with a special copy of the yearbook. Suddenly, what I would write would not be for my friends and loved ones—it would be heard by hundreds of strangers. For me, that changed everything. It was like the difference between singing in the shower and singing on a stage. I wrote the best two paragraphs on my young life.
This is what the blog can do for the beginning writer. By publishing yourself you begin to feel the charge of writing for an actual audience. At first the audience might only be your friends and family, but eventually strangers will find their way to your blog. Because it’s one thing to ask, how do I get published? It is another thing altogether to ask, what would I write if I knew I was going to be read?