Would you say I’m selfish? *No… not to your face.*
I was about to post my weekly “Thankful Friday” post this morning when I happened to read this great article from kidlit.com beforehand. It’s written by a woman named Mary, a literary agent from the Bay Area, and the article is about writers using online platforms to promote themselves and their work.
She made a thorough list of DO’s and DON’Ts, suggesting how writers should focus their online efforts. She pretty much crapped on what I use my personal site for. And I am somewhat in agreement with her. Instead of me only talking about myself, my own projects, or how many times my cat bit me while typing that day, I need to provide some sort of beneficial content for YOU.
I don’t think you reading about my own struggles with Superhero fits in that category.
So, while I’ll continue to provide updates on my own personal writing endeavors, I’m going to put more effort into providing information that’ll help you as a writer.
And that starts TODAY!
First up, this great article by a literary agent on how writers can be more successful with their online platform promotional efforts. You can read it, here.
Clueless!
Hum. . . That list was interesting. And your comments to it.
Well, I guess, it’s a matter of what you want with your blog. If you want to promote yourself or stay in tough with family and friends. I suppose it might be difficult to do both. You might want to whine to your friends but not a potential buyer of your script.
That is the scary with blogs and Internet in general. We all exist on the same arena.
Now, I don’t have any comments or suggestions about how you run your blog, more than to say that I like it.
Yeah me too. I like it the way it is. It’s hard to censor yourself and please an audience you’re not sure of. And besides, lifes too short.
Becky – You know what’s up.
Desiree & Alan – Thank you for your nice comments. I guess I want to learn more towards making the site more “professional” and not necessarily including my emotional ups and downs or writing struggles. And yet I want to keep it still me. I’ve got to find that balance.
Kim, my apologies in advance for the rant but I’ve come back on this one as I feel strongly that you shouldn’t have to apologise to anyone, even self, about your blog that you’ve put aside time to bring, free-of-charge, to anybody who cares to listen. If you’re striving for balance, don’t beat yourself up on our behalf – congratulations for caring so much about your audience! I know you’re talking about keeping on topic and doing the best you can to be informative and help other writers: I’m passionate myself about giving back – it’s the whole Kevin Spacey/Triggerstreet/send-the-elevator-back-down mentality http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/triggerstreet.html Your blog’s been an inspiration to me, both in its informational content and its personal window of a writer struggling to commit and move on to the next level. I hadn’t checked for a while ’cause I’ve been “too busy to cross meself”, as they say in Donegal, and when I found this topic I got kinda fired up. I mean, as a writer, why should you bother doing anything other than one’s own writing? Because the table of life will pay you back in direct proportion to what you bring to it (not my words). I wouldn’t have even had the idea for my project scriptstorm, only a vague idea now, if it weren’t for stumbling across your blog… if it weren’t for my bored googling of other writers’ names waiting for the semifinal results to go up for the CS open… if it weren’t for listening to Geoff Gilmore from Sundance exhort me to get out there and enter competitions when he landed in the small Irish village next to mine more or less by fluke… As you see, the list of chance encounters that helps shape our destinies is anything but predictable with only one thing certain: we achieve far less in isolation. So what is beginning to crystallise out of this topic is, yes, those on the upper floors can indeed send the elevator back down – Spacey has achieved for young kids from Inner London sink estates what all the National Theatres and Royal Shakespeares put together have never even come close to – yet trips down from those top few floors to make that journey are longer and more arduous the higher one ascends. The resources of even the mighty are finite. I like to see myself as being somewhere around the first floor of the Hollywood Tower, where it’s a shorter trip back down the service stairs but there’s even more folk stuck in the lobby who could use a hand up. What am I doing turning back to help when I could be making my own way up the stairs? Because if there are enough of us it should be easy to break down the boardroom door and smash through the glass ceiling when we reach the top. I’ve come across plenty really helpful signposts in your blog, including the article on this topic (although I’m disagreeing, it’s brilliant and I’ll be using it as a blueprint) and it’s taken me so long to get where I am right now in terms of basic professionalism of writing/planning/formatting etc, I can’t help wondering what a noble service it is in the information age to help circumvent that long journey and empower others travelling the same road. Trying not to stray into therapist-speak here. Who knows from where the next Kerry Williamson http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1201058/ may come. Funny when I was thinking of this stuff at lunch today making notes on my iphone a text broke right through the same instant from a local writer who has been asking for my advice on copyright. I don’t even recall how she knows me or who gave her my number but the timing was perfect. It was like, hey, I’m your audience, remember me? Difficult to pinpoint the transition between searching in vain for advice yourself and others asking you for it. So keep it personal; keep it real. A blog that’s not personal is like playing Debussy without the pedal; toast without marmalade. Thanks again for your investment of time and passion.