Tag: blogging

Where My Blog and Novel Stand

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

 

Janet’s Writing Blog

Since writing Friday’s blog post (Getting Blog Traffic in 2017,) I’ve decided to change my routine and just blog on Mondays. When I read that blogging once-a-week was ideal for someone trying to establish their brand, I thought, “That’s not for me. I like blogging twice-a-week.” I couldn’t get the theory out of my head. By late Friday night I had decided to start blogging just once-a-week.

I’ve chosen Mondays. I wanted to choose Tuesdays, but for those of us who manage the WordPress.com blogs we read by getting them in a weekly format, they arrive on Monday. If I wait until Tuesday to blog, some readers won’t receive my post until the following Monday. That’s not good. I’ll try early Mondays (right after midnight on Sundays) for a while and see how that works. The great thing about a blog is that the blogger makes up her own rules. My kind of activity!

The Spanish Coin

Something happened on Saturday that told me I’d made the right decision about my blog. Or, perhaps what happened on Saturday came about as the result of the stress relief Friday night’s decision gave me. Follow?

If you’ve been following my blog for very long, you know I’ve been working on a novel manuscript with the working title of The Spanish Coin for more than a decade. (I’m not only a slow reader, I’m a slow writer!) Several months ago I discovered some facts that made it clear that I needed to make major changes in my historical novel. Another name for that is REWRITE, as in START OVER! After 10 years of work, this realization knocked the wind out of my sails. I have struggled over this for about three months – maybe longer. (It feels like three years.)

I knew I had to change the names and location of my novel. I believed I could keep the working title, The Spanish Coin, but many of the details of the story and perhaps most importantly, the climax, had to change. After kicking around ideas for weeks, on Saturday I finally settled on a new location for the story. I changed the names of most of the characters, and I changed the year it happened. Those decisions freed me up to start writing the new outline. By the time I turned off the computer at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, I had written 300 words of backstory, more than 2,500 words of outline, and 250 words of character sketches. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders!

Saturday was just the beginning, but I can’t tell you how invigorated I feel knowing that I have started the rewrite. I’m optimistic about what I will get accomplished this week!

Until my next blog post on July 3

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading The Secret Speech, by Tom Rob Smith.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time and feel as optimistic about your work in progress as I do mine.

Janet

Getting Blog Traffic in 2017

Tomorrow is my blog’s 7th blogaversary. My first blog post was on June 24, 2010. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been blogging for seven years. There’s a good reason for that. In 2010 I only blogged four times. I blogged once in 2011. In 2011 I blogged only seven times. It wasn’t until July 7, 2014 that I started blogging on a regular basis. That was the month before the publication of my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I finally felt like I had something to write about!

 

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Happy 7th Blogaversary to Janet’s Writing Blog!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I am constantly learning more about blogging. You may have noticed that I’ve started trying to write catchier blog post titles. I’m also trying to limit my post titles to five words. I read somewhere that’s ideal, but now I don’t remember why. Seems like it has something to do with showing up in a Google search.

MostlyBlogging.com

Janice Wald’s blog post on June 10, 2017 (http://www.mostlyblogging.com/generate-better-traffic) said something that made me stop in my tracks and reread a couple of paragraphs. The post was written by Raymond Crain, who works for E2M, a social media marketing agency based in San Diego.

In a nutshell, Mr. Crain said that blogging daily is out and blogging good content is in. Yay! I don’t have to feel guilty for only blogging twice-a-week!

He said Google now puts more emphasis on the “intent” of the searcher and the “quality” of the blog post. If you’re blogging for your own enjoyment, posting daily is fine, but if you’re trying to get your brand out there and drive more traffic to your blog you might want to read Mr. Crain’s article. This was just one of his five recommendations.

A Writer’s Path blog

Guest post contributor Shelley Widhalm said on Ryan Lanz’s A Writer’s Path blog on June 13, 2017 (https://ryanlanz.com/2017/06/13/why-blogging-is-important-for-writers/) that blogs are here to stay, but that it is quality and not quantity that’s important when establishing your brand and your credentials as a blogger worth reading. Therefore, there is more to blogging than attaining high search engine optimization (SEO.)

Ms. Widhalm stated, “Research shows that blogs should be posted once a week on the same day of the week . . . .”

She did not cite that specific research, but I will take the statement under consideration and continue to watch to see what becomes standard practice. Blogging is a creative outlet for me, so I won’t promise to conform to recommended schedules.

What do you think?

Would you prefer that I only blog once-a-week? I might give that some thought.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have good book to read. I’ve just finished reading Camino Island, by John Grisham and Put the Cat in the Oven Before You Describe the Kitchen, by Jake Vander Ark. (More on that in July when I blog about the books I read in June.)

If you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Janet

Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2017 Theme Reveal

What is the Blogging from A to Z Challenge?

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is an annual challenge open to all bloggers during the month of April. The first challenge was issued in 2010 and has steadily grown in participants each year. It is open to bloggers who write about any topic. I just learned about the challenge a couple of week ago.

Theme Reveal Day: March 20, 2017

My Blogging from A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal

Each participating blogger selects a theme for the challenge. My theme is Janet’s Writing Journey. That’s the theme of my blog already, but this challenge will force me to delve into some aspects of reading and writing that I maybe wouldn’t have written about otherwise.

How does the Challenge Work?

The challenge is to blog 26 days during April. This is based on the fact that there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Each blog post must have a connection to a letter in the alphabet in chronological order. Posts are made on Saturday, April 1, then Monday through Saturday of each week through the end of the month plus a post on Sunday, April 30.

Blogging from A to Z Challenge Badge 2017

My Thoughts about the Challenge

This will be a challenge for me in more than one way. As you know, I usually only blog on Tuesdays and Fridays, so blogging 26 times in April will be a stretch for me. Add to that the requirement to connect with a specific letter each day, and it will definitely be a challenge!

In case you don’t want to receive a blog post from me every day, I ask you to please bear with me in April. I plan to go back to my usual blogging routine in May.

Until my next blog tomorrow

I hope you have a good book to read. (I’m reading Right Behind You, by Lisa Gardner.) If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time. If you’re a blogger, I invite you to consider committing to the Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2017. Information about the challenge can be found at http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/what-is-blogging-from-to-z.html.

Janet

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Mark de Castrique’s Mystery Writing Workshop – Part 2

Today’s blog post is a continuation of my blog post on October 19, 2016, about Mark de Castrique’s Mystery Writing Workshop I attended last Saturday at Lanier Library in Tryon, North Carolina.

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Picking up where I left off on October 19, today I will start by talking about the first of two writing exercises we did during the workshop.

A Writing Exercise

The most challenging part of the three-hour workshop was the first writing exercise. Participants were instructed to do the following in 20 minutes:

  1. Create a character who was a police officer or detective
  2. Think of (or write, if we wished) a bio for that character
  3. Place that character in a single setting
  4. Write a narrative scene in first person
  5. End the scene just before a body is discovered.

Each of us read our work aloud. Mr. de Castrique gave everyone positive feedback. I was amazed at the talent in the room. Mr. de Castrique did a good job making us feel like we were in a safe, non-judgmental place. He put all of us at ease.

Carolyn Wheat’s Four Arcs of a Book

Mr. de Castrique recommended How to Write Killer Fiction, by Carolyn Wheat. Ms. Wheat says a book has the following four arcs:

  1. The beginning
  2. The middle
  3. The place where the detective in a murder mystery faces something that seem impossible to overcome
  4. The ending.

Mr. de Castrique described each arc. He talked about novel endings that work and endings that fail.

Amateur Sleuth

The next thing Mr. de Castrique addressed was putting an amateur sleuth in your book. He talked about the advantages and disadvantages of doing that.

Theme

Mr. de Castrique said the theme is “the thing in a book that will haunt you.” He cautioned us that a book can turn into a sermon if the author tries too hard to drive a point home. (He gave Stephen King credit for having said that, but I paraphrased it.)

Group Writing Exercise

The workshop ended with a group writing exercise. It was a great idea and should help me to think of future story ideas. We had to be in agreement on our choices throughout the exercise, but it would certainly work for a writer working alone. Here’s what we got to work through together:

  1. Select a closed setting, such as a shopping mall
  2. Select six individuals whose occupations would place them at that closed setting without other people being there
  3. Assign an age to each of the six characters
  4. Decide on a secret that each character has
  5. Which one gets murdered and which one is the killer?

Five Takeaways

Five points that I took away from the workshop are as follows:

  1. A good book is one where at the end you liked the world the writer created so much that you would read the book again.
  2. If you can take a scene out without hurting the story, it never should have been there to begin with.
  3. The reader should forget she or he is reading.
  4. Every reader brings his or her own life experiences to the reading of a book, so it’s no wonder that you might hate a book but someone else might say it is the best book they’ve ever read.
  5. When stumped on what to write about, I should refer to last Saturday’s group writing exercise.

After the workshop, Mr. de Castrique autographed my copy of his new book, The Singularity Race. It was an enjoyable afternoon and well worth the cost and time invested in attending the workshop.

Until my next blog post in a few days, I hope you have a good book to read and, if you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Janet

 

My Writing Plan of Action Update

I blogged about my writing plan of action on January 18, 2015. It’s time to give you an update.

You may recall that my plan in January included goals for my anticipated book of vintage postcards from the piedmont of North Carolina. That book did not come to fruition, so my plan was revised. This is what it looks like today:

(1) Schedule book signings/author events (on-going);
(2) Continue to blog every 5 days or so;
(3) Continue to search for writing contests to enter or magazine articles to write (on-going);
(4) Set aside one day each week to edit my historical novel manuscript, tentatively titled, The Spanish Coin, (until I get it polished as much as I can); and
(5) Start in earnest to find a literary agent to represent me and my novel.

I continue to try to schedule book signings and other author events. The only one I have on my calendar this summer is at the J. Hoyt Hayes Memorial Troutman (NC) Branch Library on August 27. With our house being remodeled during the next several weeks, I did not want to schedule any events until later this summer. It’s not like people are beating a path to my door begging me to come speak about my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina! I did not want to schedule any events in June or early July. I didn’t have any requests for that time period, so it worked out fine.

Originally, I thought I needed to blog daily. I came to realize that no one wanted to hear from me every day. My writing life is not that compelling. I adjusted my plan to blog every five days or so, but I will not blog just for the sake of blogging.

I continue to work on stories to submit to writing contests, although I haven’t produced any winners yet in 2015. I wrote a creative nonfiction piece about my 4th and 5th great-grandmothers for the GENEii writing contest sponsored by the Southern California Genealogy Society. I entered a contest in which the prize was to have an entire manuscript evaluated by Barbara Kyle, but I didn’t win that one either. I entered “The Other Woman,” a 1,000-word short story in the Bevel Summers Short Story Prize competition sponsored by Shenandoah Literary Review, but I learned a couple of weeks ago that it did not make the final round of judging. Such is the life of a writer, but at what point does it become counter-productive to keep entering writing contests and not winning or placing? There were more than 1,000 entries in the Bevel Summers competition. My story was eliminated going into the third round of judging. No time spent writing is wasted; however, I must be selective because most contests have an entry fee. Getting no constructive feedback from writing contests is a drawback. My money might be better spent in getting my novel manuscript evaluated by a professional.

We’re down to number four on my plan. This is where the wheels begin to fall off my wagon. I thought it would be easy to set aside one day each week to edit and revise the manuscript of my historical novel, The Spanish Coin. I have failed to discipline myself to accomplish that. I have worked on it for a few minutes here and there, but that is a terrible way to approach such work. I must block out at least an hour or more on a regular basis to do it justice. Being surrounded by the noise of a remodeling project is not conducive to any form of writing, especially something as important as a novel. Until I get number four under control, I can’t move on to number five.

A written plan for my writing makes me accountable. I’m a discouraged at the moment, but I will keep writing. It’s what I love to do!