Sorry I haven't blogged here in a
couple of weeks. Life sort of got out of hand, and chores piled up that had to
be done. Know all of you out there will understand that.
So, I've been reading all the
rules for creating a successful, professional blog and have decided I don't
understand most of them. Turns out I haven't ever done anything right, as far
as the rules go. I've never had a Feed Burner or FeedBlitz so that people could
subscribe to my blog. Don't know anything about an RSS feed because I've been
so busy figuring out what I ought to post that would be helpful to my readers that
I didn't learn how to find or use those. Looks like the folks who provide the
blogging space would provide that stuff, since it seems we have to have it.
Okay, I can hear the chatter and
tongue clucking already. Why don't I Google that stuff and learn about it?
Well, that's simple. I've spent the last year Googling all the thousands of
ways I can promote myself, build a platform, create a brand, make myself
visible to the millions of people who prowl the Web day and night…big breath…and
sharing what I've learned. Fine, getting a proper blog should be a big part of
that effort. Sometimes I feel like I'm standing in this hundred-mile-long line
waiting to be served.
In an effort to fix this huge
error in my education, later this month some of us local writers are attending
a conference at the University of Arkansas where we'll learn how to use WordPress.
Ah, a proper blog at last, one would hope.
It isn't that I don't know how to
write stuff. I'm pretty good at that. And I'll share anything I learn in a way
that makes it easy for others to comprehend. It's that all this other business
defeats me. Go to my website and you'll see tons of stuff. History, photos,
books, chapters, and almost anything you need to know about me. But click on
the Blog there and you'll see one or two futile attempts. Mostly inane subjects
I can't imagine anyone cares about.
Check out my other blogs. I have
three including this one here at blogger. Why did I do that? Shoot, who knows?
I wanted to separate my historical information from my writer information from
a journal of sorts that would just contain random information. Aha, I read
somewhere that a blogger should never write random information. We should have
a genre for our blog just like we do for our books.
That's probably where I strayed
into trouble. You see, I write in many genres, so it follows I'd do the same
with my blogs. Historical nonfiction, biographies, creative nonfiction, essays,
western historical romances, horror, paranormal fiction, short stories,
newspaper articles, and women's fiction. Don't ever do that. Not unless you absolutely
can't help yourself. Do as I say, not as I do because it'll mess up your
writing and your promotion and your branding life forever.
If you don't believe me, check
out my books on my Kindle page or my website, or my blogs: Historical ; Journal. Then maybe
you'll be as confused as I am.
3 comments:
Velda, I look forward to the time I'm only as confused as you are. Thanks for your help.
Velda, haven't I warned you about the perils of heavy thinking? Sometimes I think people create rules to make THEM look like they know what they're talking about. Take me, for instance. I could write 100 rules about Laziness & Procrastination (if I ever got around to it)but it doesn't make it law. A person could break all of my rules and still be highly effective at laziness.
You two guys made me feel a lot better. I've stumbled around all week. Thanks for the comments.
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