I have a list of things you need to know and things you might not care to know. It is up to you whether to prove you have a longer attention span than a gnat and keep reading or not.
Yeah, I know it is not smart to insult the reader but if you have been here for a while you know I am much more specific in my insults than that.
I know what you look like bald and naked. Relax, I haven’t taken over your webcam or secretly placed spy cameras in your house or office.
Blame it on the Brady Bunch or some show I saw during the ’70s. Way back during the days of my youth I saw something that said the best way to get over stage fright was to imagine people naked or in their underwear.
Apparently it stuck with me in ways no one could have imagined because now I look at your picture and imagine you bald and naked, but not every time. Truth is that if I have done it once I probably won’t do it again unless you are bald in which case I won’t think about it unless you post a picture of yourself with hair.
Sometimes I Blog For The Joy Of Writing
Sometimes I wonder what a bridge over troubled waters really looks like and sometimes I blog for the joy of writing. I get the same feeling doing this as when I work out with weights.
There is an adrenaline rush that comes with exercising my mind and my body and since I want to improve both there is no reason not to do things that help facilitate that.
I don’t know about you but one of the most frustrating things in my life is not being published. Â A ma shouldn’t just write about having 39 unpublished books, he should do something about it.
Ask me to explain why I am unpublished and I’ll tell you I don’t have an agent and I haven’t gone the self publishing route. I’ll tell you that I have stories that can be turned into books.
Maybe A Gun Would Have Helped has received a ton of praise and so have a boatload of the stories included here.
Why  haven’t I done more with these? Why I haven’t taken that next step?
I don’t have a precise answer. Maybe it is fear holding me back. Maybe it is something else but it doesn’t matter because I know I won’t be satisfied until I cross that line.
The only person I hold accountable for that is me.
You Won’t Become Smarter But You Might Be Sexier
The blogsosphere is crowded, cluttered and chaotic which is precisely why people tell you to focus on writing headlines that draw people in but I am not good about that.
It is not because I am incapable but because I don’t like all these rules. I don’t like all of the structures and the feeling of being shackled. Unfettered and free is how I do best but then I start to think about whether I would be better served to spend more time playing the game.
Play the game and the theory is you’ll grow your blog faster– more readers, more exposure and more opportunities. Do those things and you’ll have a better chance of being discovered and even if you aren’t there are benefits.
If you are active in trying to find an agent or to engage in self publishing there will only be benefits in having a larger platform to use to promote your work.
Someone once told me that I would find more success if I focused my writing more specifically upon one topic. Be a dad blogger, be a social media writer or be a marketing guy but just be one thing is what they offered but I couldn’t buy in.
It might be my own bias but I see merit in writers having multiple interests. People aren’t just one thing. I am not just a writer and I am not just a father. I am a son, a brother, friend and more.
Why should we limit ourselves.
Maybe it is time for me to take another crack at turning this story into something more.
One Last Comment About Blogging And Some Links
Several months ago I switched blog hosts and somehow I lost a bunch of the pictures from many of my blog posts. So now in addition to having to look for broken links I need to try to fix the posts with broken images.
It is one of those things I just don’t like doing but it makes a difference. Readers don’t care why the image or link is broken they just notice when they don’t work and it can reflect poorly upon you and your blog.
But sometimes the difference between us and them lies in taking those few extra steps forward to improve or so I think.
How about you?
- Five Things I Know About Writing
- Writers Write Right
- Writers Write Right Part 2
- Does Your Writing Ever Bore You?
- Four Generations & A Wedding
If everyone follows the experts then we will end up with a very uninteresting internet full of click bait and animated GIFs.
And while on the subject of experts, I really don’t like this writing rule: “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” Isn’t the choice of words what defines a writer? I understand that you shouldn’t shoehorn in a big word just to show off, but if I want to write “lavatory” instead of “bathroom” because I like the way it flows, or just prefer the color it paints, then that’s my decision as a writer. It’s not my fault if the reader isn’t educated.
Also, there’s a WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker to help you fix your dead links: https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/
Writing rules are a funny thing. My English teachers and journalism professors filled my head with rules that sometimes were diametrically opposed.
They might be disappointed to know I don’t often think about any of them (the rules) that is any more because after 20 some odd years of writing “profeshunally” I have learned how to communicate in a way that makes people respond.
Experience has also confirmed not everyone responds well to my style and my voice. I am ok with that. It is natural. The point is when you write in a natural style it tends to be more effective and sometimes that means using the longer word.
I like Broken Link checker but it doesn’t like my blog much. Sucker has broken down on me a few times. Probably worth reinstalling to give it another go.
I understand what it is like not knowing what to do with stories or a book. I have a 90,000 word behemoth that I have worked on an editor twice with, but I am in kind of a dead stage right now and haven’t worked on it in over a year. I’m planning on starting a different book soon, but it can be difficult especially when one is use to writing short articles. It takes a lot of stamina.
You are right that the blogosphere is chaotic and crowded. It can be difficult to get new and consistent traffic. It requires a lot of marketing, which can be tiresome.
When it comes down to it, I think it all depends on what your goal for your blog is.
90k words– sounds like you have some meat and substance to work with there. That is very cool.
Goals for the blog make all the difference, really provide the easiest way to try and construct a road map to success.
Hi Jack,
I have a short attention span. I have been working on a long fiction work and am not sure if it belongs as a short story or a book. The exercise of writing and keeping the plot in line thus far has been a large enough challenge for me.
I have been getting back to blogging, but fear that my posts are too depressing. What I have to remember is even if I blog to the echo chamber, it helps me to talk out loud about what I have experienced. With some luck, perhaps I will be able to give someone else hope.
Hi Nancy,
How are you? Your attention span is influenced by what happened to you so that is a whole different ball of wax.
If you find your posts help you than I say keep going. One thing I have learned from blogging is that we never know who is going to relate to what we say. Sometimes the posts I think are the silliest end up doing the best because people relate to them.
It is a wacky world sometimes.