Blogging Handbook for Fiction Writers

The Blogging World and the Fiction Writer

It's almost a rule these days--- if you are a fiction writer, or are serious about becoming one, you have a blog. Ideally, you have a fairly good blog that you update every now and then. But if you don't have a blog, or your blog needs improvement, what then? This handbook is here to help.

What is a blog? It's a kind of website, using software that makes it easier to put up a post by just typing it in. The posts are sorted into chronological order, and there is usually an archive of old posts that makes it possible to find that cool post you wrote in 2007.

Writers use blogs for a number of purposes. The just-starting-out writer uses it to share samples of his writing with the world, or to interact with others who write. A published author may use a blog to connect with his readers, or to update people when a new book of his hits the market.

Blogging is a social medium. Interacting with your readers--- when your blog has some--- is part of the game. Reading blogs written by other people, and commenting on them, is also part of the blogging life.

Writing posts on a blog is often a good writing exercise. If you commit to writing three new blog posts each week, you have 3 little deadlines to help you remember to get this little piece of writing finished. And once you post to your blog, you might get actual feedback!

Many writers seek in vain to get someone, anyone, to look at a piece of their writing and react to it. It's hard to wait months and years before you finish a novel, and then send it out to publishers and agents in the hope that someone will either accept it or give you a hint of feedback.

With blogging, you can write something and post it today, and as soon as it is up, other people might start looking at it. It may be a while before you have people begin to comment on your blog posts, but if you are persistent with your blogging that will come in time.

For the self-published/indie author, your blog is a chance to prove that you can actually write in readable English sentences (or readable Farsi sentences, depending,) and when people know that, they are more likely to try your self-published book. 

But sometimes starting a blog is tough. You are not sure how to do it right. You worry that you've made mistakes. You worry when no one seems to visit your blog, and you worry when people stop by your blog looking for something you don't blog about. 

I, your less-than-perfectly-humble author, am not the world's foremost blogging expert or anything like it. But I've been blogging since blogging got started, and I hope I have learned a thing or two since then I could share with you.

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