Blogging Question...

There's a rather well-known blog called Whatever, by author John Scalzi. No matter what anyone thinks of Mr. Scalzi himself, they cannot say that his blog is unsuccessful. He's got a huge following. And he blogs about... whatever. Sometimes it's about his writing; sometimes it's his views on a particular issue; sometimes it's about his own life.

Blog about what interests you. It seems to me that most people like knowing more about an author than just their writing, and for most writers, everything they're interested in is related to their writing anyway.

 

Dan, if you were trying to start a niche blog to sell affiliate products I would absolutely tell you to stick to a topic.

An authors blog or a personal blog is an entirely different matter. Write what you want. Have fun with it. Whatever.

Also, if you were to switch you blog over to the self hosted version of WP there are plugins that could do what you're asking.

 

You must follow the rules as laid down by the arbiters of good taste, profitability, commerce and blogging on pain of cyber-death (maybe even real death). Deviance will not be tolerated! If you cannot specialize, if you cannot sell, if you cannot create yet another boring cookie-cutter monetized blog what's the point. Get it!?!

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Write what you want.

 

A blog should be whatever you want. You don't need to focus on a particular niche. As you blog, you will probably find that there are a limited number of things you blog about, and you can find some definition for the blog in that.

Every person is different, and your blog can be interesting if you blog about the scope of things you are interested in, that scope is unique to you.

 

Um... I can honestly say, Dan, that you've got my attention, at least for the moment, with the selections from your Biomancer Chronicles. I wish to thank you for writing exactly the kind of thing -- and drawing my attention to it at exactly the right time -- to help me get myself back into writing the stuff I'm supposed to be working on. And no, my novel is nothing like yours. It's just... Well, the situation your protagonsist wakes up to at the very beginning of chapter 2 there. Now I feel that I can go forth and add stuff to my own chapters 7 and 8, having recaptured the emotions of my PoV in those scenes.

So... Yeah, keep it up with posting your fiction, if that's what you want to do. If you also have things to say about where you get your ideas, how you feel about the writing process, or which famous author you want to be like when your own career takes off, that would be interesting to me as a reader, too. ('Cause I'm a nosey bastard and like to know the origin stories of stories, like if somebody got half their plot from the name of a rock band in the early 80s or whatever.)


(Following your blog now, by the way.)

 

Like the posters before me, I think you should do whatever you feel like doing. There aren't any rules, after all.

Most authors' blogs I've read have just a little bit of everything. Rants, movie/game/novel reviews, advice on writing, interviews... you name it.

 

Dan,

It sounds like your goal is to have a blog moreso than to achieve any specific purpose with that blog.

If you told us, "Hey, I want to achieve this," we could tell you, "Try this content."

As it is, you've already achieved your goal of having a blog, so write what you want.

BTW, I've found the off topic posts are a great way to bring in new traffic, especially if you link to it at the proper places. I just try not to dilute my content too much by doing such too often.

 

In terms of having an author platform, your blog can be about whatever (and probably SHOULD be). As long as you're having fun with it, then keep at it. My blog doesn't get too many followers, but when I started doing reviews and writing the occasional article on academia or education, I started getting people finding the blog via search engines.

I'm not sure how Wordpress handles it, but Blogger has labels for all your posts which can immediately categorize and sort all your posts.

 

Wordpress does allow posts to be categorized. I don't know how this works -- I've never used that feature myself -- but I know it's there.

 

I gotta say: This seems like a really great idea. In fact, why don't a bunch of us get together and do something like this?

We could each pledge 1000 words a month as production and pledge to beta read one other writer's 1000 words. That way, we'd keep the quality good and the personal work volume low. Shoot for 8 to 10 people, and we'd have a pretty good product.

 

No reason you couldn't maintain an archive. Double post everything you do at other sites and what you do on your on. On the other sites, you can link to your archive so that, if someone's really interested, they'd be able to find all your stuff.

The difference being that, with a blog, the reader expects regular updates. With an archive, they will understand it's a repository for all your stories. It's pretty easy to set up a blog where the front page is static and you just add a link to each new post.