Mad Author with a Blog

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Jenny just posted yesterday about the relationship between art and marketing; today I'll be following it up with a post on the latter subject - though I should hope it will be helpful for those of you who are currently blogging purely for fun.  We all envy you.

For those of you who have done some research on publication and read blogs dealing with the subject, you've probably already heard the concept of building a platform.  It's popular - I know of one book on the subject, and I'm sure there are plenty more - and can be made to sound quite frightening, but the basic idea is that of planting yourself deeply and squarely in your field.  In writing, this means marketing to your audience: fiction or nonfiction; middle-grade, young adult, adult; men or women; fantasy, historical, dystopian, what-have-you.  This is what makes "knowing your audience" so important, because marketing your young adult dystopian to middle-aged fans of World War II history is not only silly, it's also a waste of everyone's time.

Building a platform can take many different forms, but one of the most common nowadays is starting a blog.  It has a number of advantages over sites like Facebook or Twitter; authors can write lengthier posts on weightier topics (it's hard to be weighty in 160 characters!), but still interact with readers.  A blog also allows more of the author's voice and personality to come through and gives potential readers a better idea of what the author's book might read like.

But there are very rarely advantages without some disadvantages.  While blogs are fun at the start, when ideas are simply brimming in our minds, they can lose their charm fast and leave us quite disillusioned.  If you want to maintain a blog and use it as a platform, you have to be dedicated to it.  You can't just quit when the ideas won't come; you have to go after inspiration with a club, as Jack London would say.  ...Did say, even.  Blogs are also quite a bit of work to maintain, unlike a Facebook or Twitter account (although I confess I fail in the latter respect).  You can't just log in, type a one- or two-line comment, submit it and go your way.  You've got to make time to sit down and think out, and type out, a post of at least a couple paragraphs and some worthwhile content.

Content, too, can be a difficulty.  Glancing over the blogs I come across, I find an alarming number of ones where the writer seems to have started and then lost either interest or ideas or both.  This may mean that the last post was put up in February 2009, or it may mean that the writer has struggled along with a post per month on random and unimportant aspects of their lives.  Readers learn about the author's fifth cousin who has a deathly illness, or the author's new poodle-greyhound-Great Dane puppy, or sometimes hey! look! my new book released: whaddya know?  This is obligatory blogging combined with purposelessness, and it results in boring reading and a jittery platform.

If we want to undertake a blog for anything more than a sort of public journal (which I confess I don't understand), we have to think about it beforehand and use some sort of plan and schedule in the process.  It isn't necessary to post every day, or every other day, or even every other third day; in fact, posting too frequently, especially if the blog doesn't have more than one contributor, can get repetitive.  But neglecting the blog for weeks on end has the same effect.  It's good to have in mind a general idea of how frequently you want to post.  You don't have to stick to it religiously - at least, I know I don't - but it can be helpful to know what goal you're working toward.

In the interest of building a platform, it's also important to know what topics you want to be posting on. Again, I don't recommend setting this in stone; some people like to set a schedule of posting on one thing on Mondays and another topic Fridays and pictures on Sundays, but that doesn't suit everyone.  Just make sure you know what you're blogging for and what topics you are best suited to write on.  If historical fiction is your genre, perhaps research (but I'd advise you to take this in small doses, because out of context it can be found dull), incorporation of historical characters, and general writing tips.  Don't spend posts rambling about things that readers of the genre don't care about, like your poodle-greyhound-Great Dane.  That's what spots like private Facebook accounts and Twitter are for. 

Spontaneity is fine; it makes the blog more fun.  

Randomness is not; it is the mark of an unfocused mind.

Curiosity, Cats, and a Cat Lady

Day Eight!  It is difficult to realize that November is yet young.  We've only been at this NaNo-ing and partying business for a week - goodness!  Anyhow, I thought it was about time for you people to feature.  A number of readers submitted questions, and I was kept very busy during October with answering them.  Today you can read part one and have at least some of your curiosity assuaged.  (Great word, that.)

First of all, however, there is a feature over at the blog of Anne Elisabeth Stengl, cat-lady extraordinaire and the award-winning authoress of the Tales of Goldstone Wood.  She very cheerfully agreed to host myself and Jenny, and gave us each a question to answer.  Mine?

I'm sure you get this a lot, but I know it's what everyone is wondering, so I'm going to ask it anyway! How did you, a busy young high school girl, find the time, gumption, and drive to write and polish a manuscript? And what steps did you take to prepare it for publication?

But I'm not giving you the answer.  You have to stop by her own lovely blog for that.  And don't forget to check out Jenny's feature while you're there! She was asked about the reasons behind her writing The Shadow Things.

Meanwhile, here are a few of the questions the readers of Scribbles sent in during October.  Mirriam asked...

1. What is your workspace like? (This was a popular question.)

It depends on whether I work on my dad’s computer or my laptop. At the desktop, I’m at a computer desk with books (either mine or dad’s) and a scattering of odd papers all around. There’s a window on my right, so I get the sunlight and can see the street. As for the laptop, it gets carted around wherever I feel like being. If I’m in my room, as I am at the moment, I sit on a bed with my cat on my lap (he doesn’t like the laptop).

2. Do you have any writing idiosyncrasies? 

I don’t like to be talked to when writing, I can’t write when people are looking over my shoulder, and I often have difficulty when anyone is in the same room. I’m a picky writer. I tend to murmur snatches of dialogue aloud when having a hard time ironing it out.

3.  Do you have favorite songs you listen to while writing? 

I don’t write well to music; it distracts me, and I find myself singing along or following the rhythm rather than typing. Occasionally I like instrumental music, like Two Steps from Hell, and up-beat music like Owl City. It all depends on the book I’m working on, though. I seem to remember listening to a lot of Manheim Steamroller and Fernando Ortega while writing The Soldier’s Cross.

4. How long does it generally take for you to write a first draft? 

This has been expanding for every book! I wrote The Soldier’s Cross in about six months; it would have been sooner if I hadn’t balked at writing—well, a particularly sad scene. My next novel came in about the same period, but the combined draft of The White Sail’s Shaking took a year and a half. But hey, it did end up being two books!

5. What sort of character is your favorite? 

What sort of character? As in, do I prefer sad and brooding, happy and bubbly, or brusque and sarcastic? That’s a hard question; it takes all sorts of characters to make up a world, and as I look around I’m at a loss to see that any one kind particularly calls out to me. I like fiery characters, but as prominent side characters, not narrators. For my main characters, I suppose you could say I like some stubbornness, some pigheadedness—traits you’ll find quite loud in Fiona. “Bubbly” is not my personality of choice, but I try not to do “brooding” much, either; all the characters from my idiotic early works were brooding, and that rather put me off writing them. Male characters are easier for me to write, and, I find, most enjoyable.

6. What is your favorite character you've created so far? Why? 

You do like the hard questions, don’t you, Mirriam? You expect me to look at my casts of characters and choose a single favorite? Pshaw! It greatly depends on which book I’m in closest proximity to. When I finished The Soldier’s Cross it was Pierre; when I finished Wordcrafter it was Ethan and Justin both; now that I’ve just completed The White Sail’s Shaking, it’s a terribly hard draw between Tip and Charlie. (I’m pretty fond of Josiah Darkwood, too.) I like contrasts. I like to see the sparks fly from two such different personalities as Tip Brighton and Charlie Bent, and to see the give and take on both sides. I love Tip for his rough, uncultured, well-meaning bumbling and the pigheadedness I mentioned before; but I love Charlie for his elaborate elegance, his poise, and his snide arrogance. They’re opposites, and I think that’s what endears me to them both.

Bree asked...

7. The Soldier's Cross is your first book: had you tried writing any other books before it, and if so, what was one of them?

I did attempt a number of books before writing The Soldier’s Cross, but I never managed to finish them—perhaps I simply needed the pressure of something like NaNo (I don’t believe I previously managed to write more than 30,000 words on one story), or perhaps it was because the plots were so terribly lame.  The first thing I put my keyboard to was a sort of fanfiction based on one of Jenny’s own early stories.  It was populated by archetypical Mary Sues and Gary Stus, and I abandoned it eventually.  Then I tried a murder mystery, for at the time I was in love with Agatha Christie’s works, but I was far more interested in the characters than in the murder or the plot. 

Better than either of these, and thus still in existence, was a collection of pieces centered around Stonehenge, a British girl, and the coming of the Romans and the Gospel to Britain.  I wrote no more than five or six pieces, but I still have them.  I think this was the piece that saw me begin to improve.

8. Are you planning on publishing any of your other books in the near future?

But of course!  The White Sail’s Shaking is being shoved across literary agents’ desks now, or into their inboxes.  Since I have decided to pursue traditional publication, the timing is very much not up to me.

9. Has writing been a long-time love or a newer excitement? (i.e. how long have you been writing?)

I’ve been writing for five or six years now.  I don’t think I began, however, because I really loved writing.  I began because Jenny was a writer, and I wanted to imitate that and to be able to capture, as she did, characters and places and far-reaching adventures.  I wanted, too, to be good at something.  I began to write just at the time when young people generally start to get their legs beneath them and make sure of their own bearings, and writing was something that grew out of my own search for a passion.  It’s a pretty good one, I think!

10. Which do you prefer writing: fantasy or historical fiction?

Unlike many, I have to say I lean toward historical fiction.  I confess I’m not very good at stretching my mind to the fantastical, and world-building from the ground up is a great undertaking indeed.  Of course with historical fiction there is also an element of world-building, but at least you’re given the mud and the straw before being told to make bricks.  Besides, I love the richness of history.  I love historical figures like Edward the Black Prince or Simon de Montfort, Stephen Decatur or Alexander Hamilton.  I love time periods like the Age of Sail.  I love the unfolding saga of humanity, chilling though it often is.  Writing stories that live and breathe among such characters, such times, is a thrilling vocation.

11. What author(s) inspire you?

Many authors inspire me.  Close to home, there’s Jenny—but most of you know that.  Then there are authors I’ve known a long time, like C.S. Lewis (for his way of getting down to the glowing heart of a matter); Rosemary Sutcliff (for her richness and the bitter-sweet flavor of her writing); Jane Austen (for her wit and romance); and Charles Dickens (for his amazing skill at weaving together immense casts and plots).  I also enjoy James Fenimore Cooper, especially The Last of the Mohicans, even though it did rip my heart out.  More recently, I’ve discovered Robert Louis Stevenson, and something about his writing speaks to my heart: maybe it’s the spice of adventure in the words. 

For inspiration, however, I have to say that I can glean inspiration from whatever I happen to be reading, or watching, or listening to: things as far-flung as Sherlock Holmes and Owl City.  Perhaps it’s the trait of any artist to be stimulated by life in general.

12. Do you prefer hot chocolate, apple cider, tea or coffee while writing?

Tea!  Twinings, preferably Ceylon, though I’ll drink anything black (except the Greys; I can’t stand the Greys).  I like coffee to wake me up over office work, but I don’t drink it while I write.  Apple cider and hot chocolate tend to flay my throat.  So when I do need a hot drink, it’s tea for me.

There are a number of questions still waiting to be answered, but they shall be "got to" soon! Stay tuned for Part Two, and maybe Part Three, as well.