Help Please! Do You Write A Blog?

[Paul Whybrow]

I'm contemplating a return to self-publishing, but despite being immersed in the world of writing and publishing for five years, I'm still as confused as ever as to the point of writing an author's blog.

I can see that it could have a therapeutic value, allowing me to vent—though this might be unwise, as my vents can be volcanic!

We've previously discussed blogging in many threads, including this one, but I wondered how many members of the Colony actually write a blog.

I recently subscribed to the blog of @Robinne Weiss and always enjoy opening her posts—though I often feel frustrated that I don't have land to cultivate + I wind up with a craving for cake!

After my Wordpress blog entries mysteriously disappeared, I'm considering starting a blog with another provider. I could post about things that take place in my Cornish Detective stories: escaped big cats, poisonings, crimes of passion and malicious murder, human trafficking, arms smuggling, steroid abuse, Brexit, rustling of livestock, domestic abuse, the Cornish coast, surfing and swimming, Bodmin Moor and its ancient burial mounds and monuments, wild gardening, pagans, the art scene and pasties!

The problem is, I prefer creative writing, so I'm going to have to be very, very strict with myself to get any form of self-promotion done.

Do you have a blog?

Which blogging platform do you use?

Do you think it helps your writing and sales of your books?

What do you get out of it?

How many subscribers do you have?

 

[AliG]

I used to blog on a regular basis, every two weeks but got out of the habit when another life/time tsunami hit. It does take a sizeable chunk of time if you are going to produce anything of quality; fun though, banging out another piece of creative writing. I tended to stick to things which amused me rather than a rant as I don’t much enjoy reading rants.
I’ve never had problems with WordPress, finding it quite easy to use even though I’m not exactly a techie.
Phile me under Technophobe
Problem is with habits sometimes being difficult to set up and equally tricky to maintain in the face of time pressures. I did have a few followers, although not many, and I doubt it helped with book sales. Blogging has been done very well by one writer building up to the publication of her novel where she concentrated on beautiful images so that it was a pleasure to visit. I suspect it probably did help with her sales but that's my gut feeling rather than fact.
Deborah Lawrenson

It does need to be fed on a regular basis however otherwise your hits go down dramatically.
Perhaps I should blog about it.

 

[Emurelda]

Yes, I do. But I put what I fancy on a sporadic basis. Nothing regular. I started it originally because I was told that the first 1 million words one writes will be rubbish...so I began that to get those rubbishy words out...and I journaled again. Although I don't think they meant those kinds of words for the 1 million mark.

Anyway, I am now with a blog that is supposed to document my writing journey. Occasionally it does. I don't do it for readers, though, I do it for myself and for someone who may google and find that I exist on some writing capacity. Ho hum.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I have a blog on Wordpress. I use it to illustrate how exactly I deploy Tarot and other types of divination (runes, pendulum, playing cards.) In terms of my writing purposes, I do it because I enjoy it, but I'm also gestating a book, not remotely New Age in remit.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I recently subscribed to the blog of @Robinne Weiss and always enjoy opening her posts—though I often feel frustrated that I don't have land to cultivate + I wind up with a craving for cake!

Rural life porn.

But, seriously, I really enjoy writing the blog, and it's the sort of writing I intended to do when I closed the Bugmobile. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked by middle-grade novels, and my blog is way off the mark to help in selling those. Still, one of these days I'll write 365 Days at Crazy Corner Farm (which I've outlined already ... a mix of seasonal musings and recipes--one per day) and make use of the best of those blog posts and the audience I've slowly built.

I don't think any writing is wasted. Even if your blog isn't read by anyone, the act of writing it forces you to try to express a thought in a coherent and entertaining manner without spending all day agonising over it (as opposed to something scribbled in a journal, which you know (hope) will never be read by anyone else). That's great practice. And for me it gives me a small, discrete task to accomplish. When I'm working on a novel, some (most) days feel like an unending slog (in a good way). At the end of a long day of novel writing, I often can't see a lot of progress, but if I finish the day by writing a blog post, I can at least say I completed a piece of writing that day.

And it's fascinating looking at what sort of posts garner the most attention. My most slap-dash posts invariably get more attention than those I spend a lot of time on or those that tackle deep subjects. As @AliG pointed out, people like beautiful images, they don't want to have to work hard. Food porn is absolutely the most popular on my blog, hence the frequency with which cake shows up (well, okay, cake shows up all the time because I love cake).

 

[Peter Hankins]

I have a weekly non-fiction blog which is not about my creative writing, though I have featured some short bits of fiction. I use a WordPress installation on my own site; if I were starting again I’d probably just settle for the free WordPress.com hosted package, with a domain added. These days I get about 200 visits a day, which is well down on the peak a few years back, but then the golden age of blogs is over anyway, with the excitement gone to social media.
It definitely competes with my other writing and uses up energy which could otherwise give me an extra 1,000 words a week; perhaps more, as it requires a lot of non-fiction reading. Since it will be no use promotionally, you might ask why I bother.

 

[Amber]

Seriously? You already write a blog. This is what you would put on a blog. The weekly posts you write here are what you would post on a blog.

I mean, you realize this is essentially a blog right? You post, we answer. If it's your blog, it's normally a good idea to respond to those who comment on what you say. Or, if you deem no comment warranted, then you could like a comment. Or, give it a thumbs up. It is so much like what you're already doing, there'd be virtually no learning curve.

I've had several blogs. Maybe you didn't know but every WordPress website is a blog. They're blog themes. Although, it's true, the time when WordPress blogs were used only to blog is long past. I made my websites pretty and then abandoned them. I never had followers. I'd have to put a different sort of work into them to get followers. I'd have to focus on forming relationships with readers.