BLOG
News, Fiction Updates & General MusingsFace Value – How to Run a Good Author Blog
An author website without a blog is like a person without a face. Just picture it: no pretty eyes, no cheeky smile. Just… skin.
An author website with a bad blog, however, is even worse. The face might be back, but damn, it ain’t pretty.
Annie Mole via Compfight
Fortunately, in the world of blogging, creating your face and maintaining a ‘good author blog’ is a rather simple thing to do. Blogging gives you the opportunity to share useful content with readers, engage with audiences, and spurt whatever miscellaneous crap comes into your head on a regular basis. Ideally, there will be less of the latter, and more of the good stuff, but the fact stands: blogging is an invaluable way of constructing your identity. Fancy coming across as a self-obsessed ego maniac? No thanks, but you’re more than welcome to!
Here are some key rules I’ve encountered in my research, and through my own personal trial and error:
Post regularly
You NEED regularity if you are going to run a blog, or it ends up looking stale and a little ‘tacked on’. If you can’t promise regularity, then don’t bother with a blog. I have settled into a nice routine of three posts during the week, as it gives me a break between weekdays, as well as giving readers a chance to really take things in before the next post. I enjoy it, too, which surely helps.
Stay in character
How do u feel if I start talkin lyk dis? Hopefully really, really uncomfortable, because that way of speaking has no relation to the writing voice of mine you’re hopefully beginning to ‘hear’ when you read. If you want to speak like that, speak like that all the time. Don’t, if you want anybody to buy your book, but you get my point: stay consistent.
Keep it social
I’m talking social networking links, comment boxes, share buttons, and tag questions at the end of each post. A blog isn’t a one way conversation; it’s a platform for social interaction. You want to be asking your readers questions, not telling them what to do. Luckily for us bloggers, there is an easy way to do this: by asking a question. You can be as commanding as you desire in the post, but if you ask a question at the end, all is forgiven. So, link to your social media websites, share your content through those, and engage with other bloggers.
My final rule would be to keep things concise, but unfortunately, there isn’t really any space left to write about that point in this entry. Regularity, personality, and sociability – make a note of them, and bear them in mind.
I will be posting more about setting up a blog, what to blog about, and how to use social networking websites in more detail in the near future. For examples of my personal favourite blogs for inspiration, check these three out:
What are your key ingredients for blogging success? Do you struggle creating an authorial persona, or maintaining regularity in your posts?
How to Survive the First Draft Read Through
Don’t panic!
![Do you love reading? [Explored #28]](http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5108/5668493818_c4d34326f3.jpg "Do you love reading? [Explored #28]")
Completing a first draft is a fantastic feeling. You’ve beaten the odds, shrugged off the doubters, and earned yourself a few rounds from your friends. Showing your mates the latest statistics on what sort of money authors make might just earn you another couple of sympathy drinks, so don’t be afraid to milk the situation. As I explained last week, with What We Saw, I’ve found a two-week period away from things really beneficial. But, at some stage, you’re going to have to return to it for a read through.
Firstly, let me get one thing straight: the read through is absolutely terrifying. Your sentences will be clunky. The pace will be all over the place. One minute, your protagonist will be a blond shorty, the next, a lanky brunette. Unfortunately, this is just natural. It happens to the best, and undoubtedly to the worst, of us. In my first read through, I found inconsistencies in names, heights, animal breeds, and motivations. It’s tough to take.
Confidence Complex – Why Writers NEED Confidence
The benefits of believing in your ability
It is said that a fire requires oxygen, heat, and fuel, to prompt a chain reaction. Similarly, I believe that such a formula can lead to a good novel manuscript, too. Before you start setting your pages alight, I’ll explain what I mean.
In the year, or so, of writing my first draft, I noticed that things were different this time. I had tried, and failed, to plan novels in the past, for a variety of reasons. Last week, I began to think about what these reasons might be. Could it be a lack of confidence? Doubts in my ability? Or was I simply not enjoying the task at hand? It turns out that it was a bit of all three.
Initially, I decided that my formula for success would be ‘confidence + ability + enjoyment = a good novel manuscript’. It seemed an interesting theory, but I think it would be foolish to dismiss each element as existing in its own vacuum. ‘confidence’ needs a capital ‘C’. Here is a brief rundown of my reasons for each; try to look for a recurring theme…
Five Essential Apps For Writers
Mobile and desktop apps that every writer needs.
There are plenty of apps for writers out there today. We are in the midst of an ‘app’ revolution, after all. Gone are the days of lengthy installs and beefy programs clogging up our hard drives: today, we can run miniscule app files within our browser, without having to stare at a blue ‘Installing’ bar for hours. Let’s face it: we never took the friendly program’s advice and made a cup of tea. We sat, and stared, and waited… until the inevitable ‘Installation Error’ flashed up at 97%.
Fortunately, those days are long gone. As a result, a whole variety of apps for mobile devices, tablets, and computers, are readily available at miniscule costs. Here are my personal favourite apps for writers, which I probably couldn’t live without. They have been crucial tools over the last few months of writing What We Saw. I would advise every writer to try them out and see what you think.
Revising a First Draft – Let it Settle
Why you should leave a first draft to settle before revising or editing it.
Completing the first draft of a novel is a phenomenal feeling. I’ve made no secret of my emotions: writing ‘THE END!!!’, with perhaps just a couple more exclamation marks, is enough to make anybody feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. I was raring to get back into it, ready to go nuclear on an army of typos and grammatical mishaps, but instead, I imposed a two-week writing break. How I managed to stick to it, I’m quite not sure, but giving a manuscript time to settle is a tried-and-tested method used by a whole crowd of writers.
Three Useful Ways to Develop a Novel Idea
So, you followed last week’s little walkthrough and think you have a decent idea to work with? Congratulations! You’ve just about passed the stage that most aspiring writers stumble at. But, before you get too generous with the champagne, hold fire, because there is still a lot of work to do. And, if you’re planning to celebrate every little milestone with champagne, then you could run yourself into the ground financially in no time. Trust me: I like champagne.
Here are three rather simple but effective methods you can follow to try and get the most out of the basic idea you have devised:
1. Interview yourself
This technique is one I discovered in Jurgen Wolff’s ‘Your Writing Coach’. Whilst I wouldn’t recommend following any book religiously, Wolff’s guide does introduce some rather positive suggestions, especially for the ‘ideas’ stage. Wolff suggests that you should pose the question, ‘Why?’, and ask yourself why you want to work on the particular idea you have chosen, as a starting point. The idea is that through repeatedly asking ‘why?’, like a nagging child, you will not only learn just how much you really want to write the book, but begin to scratch the surface of plot elements and character motivations. Yes, really: all that information gathered from a little, annoying, three letter word. For example, if I had an idea about a killer wasp terrorising a beer garden, I would ask myself, ‘why write such a novel?’ Well, that’s because wasps are a common source of terror, and a huge, killer wasp is only likely to be scarier. ‘Why?’ Because the characters in my beer garden are… well, terrified of wasps. ‘Why?’ Um, because they are allergic to stings. ‘Why?’ Okay, scrap that idea. You get the picture.