Blogging vs. Writing: Indecision Angst

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Writers must blog, must create a “platform,” i.e., round up a bunch of people who will buy their books — or so we are told..

The bigger your platform, the more likely an agent or publisher is to pick you up.

I beg to differ — about blogging, especially.

I was a social media content consultant back before anyone called MySpace a social medium and content was called “stuff” you put on a Web site. (I still prefer Web site to website, which looks like alphabetical diarrhea.)

Here’s the deal. We don’t, and can’t, spend all our time reading blogs by writers. Readers can’t either. Yet 8 bazillion (rounded up) books are published every year either self-dubbed or traditionally dubbed. If every writer wrote a blog or carried on on Facebook or Twitter, when would readers have time to read our “stuff,” i.e.,the stories we want to sell? Short answer: Never.

The same is true for writers: You can either write your stories (books) or you can blog. (Blogging takes time if the content is to have value.) So, do you write books or write a blog?

I vote in favor of books … and every so often guilt myself into writing a blog post. Even though I know no one is reading, and I hate doing it.

And that is Indecision Angst.

Writing Around Life

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You have to write every day, if you want to be a writer.

Everyone says that.

Okay, maybe not everyone, but enough people to make it seem likjune-children-s-day-calendar-symbol-white-cube-41085882e everyone.

But what about life? You know, living? Doing the living stuff, like sleeping and eating and earning money and taking care of the kids / elderly parents / needy loved ones. What about that stuff?
I began this writing adventure exactly three years ago when I finally discovered I had a story I wanted to tell. At that time I was a senior consultant with a hard-working wife, two adult children, the greatest granddaughter ever born, a large group of friends and a serious passion for nature photography.

When does a guy write?

I’m a morning person so I moved the morning up a couple hours. The alarm started its annoying buzz at 5 a.m. Not that bad for a morning person, especially in the summer when it’s lighting up out there at 5 a.m. During the winter, it got harder.

I kept this up until last year when we experienced a family health crisis. I found I could not write at any hour, much less 5 a.m. Two years and three books in the computer, and I couldn’t write!

So I stopped and dealt with life. Sometimes you do that.

Was I less a writer than I had been the previous two years? No. I wasn’t producing stories, but I was a writer with more important things to do.

When the crisis eased, I found I still couldn’t write until my wife asked me to take it up again. I told her I just couldn’t focus enough to make things up, i.e., write fiction.

Fine, she said. Write something else. I did. Ironically, or maybe not, I turned to working on a memoir about my two years in Southeast Asia during the Viet-Nam War. That is, I went back to doing what I knew: Reporting.

The project took a year — much longer than I expected — but it’s done.

Am I back to writing fiction at 5 a.m.? Nope. Still cleaning up the memoir mess. (Doing the maps took two weeks alone. I devote at least half a day a week writing customized pitches to agents and carefully filing their rejects.)

So am I a writer or not?

Yeah, I’m a writer. Sometimes life intrudes, and you need to clean up a mess or two.

I’ll be back to writing four to six hours a day like the old days, but I’ve already decided that I won’t be doing the 5 a.m. wakeup call again. Life is too short, and I’ve found other things I can trim.

Write on.

What No One Tells You About Publishing

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I suspect I am like many aspiring authors. I overindulge in research on how to  get published, lessons learned by established authors and the like.

So when I came upon Curtis Sittenfeld‘s post on BuzzFeed entitled 24 Things No One Tells You about Book Publishing, I immediately read it and liked it.

rectangle-38507_1280She focused more on human behavior and less on nuts and bolts. Which is not to say she didn’t touch on a few nuts, like these two.

  • Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them. [I knew it. I just knew it. None of my favorite authors seem to share my taste in books.]
  • But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off. [So, I guess she’s thinking Oprah or Stephen King.]

But what I really liked was her attitude:

  • Sometimes good books sell well; sometimes good books sell poorly; sometimes bad books sell well; sometimes bad books sell poorly. A lot about publishing is unfair and inscrutable. [Emphasis mine.] But…

  • …you don’t need anyone else’s approval or permission to enjoy the magic of writing — of sitting by yourself, figuring out which words should go together [I love that.] to express whatever it is you’re trying to say.

    Brava, Curtis. Useful and comforting at the same time. Just what aspiring authors need.