RW Makeover #2: Viva La Blog
I started my RW Makeover about a year ago with the goal to become a book dork for life. Since then, I’ve written a book (which is now up for pre-order on Amazon!), bought a house, written a lot about books and spent a long time thinking about what it is I want to do with this writing career I’ve got.
I’ve come to some hard conclusions. First, writing about books is something that I love, but it’s not the best way to make money as a freelancer, especially when I now have to pay a mortgage. Reviews only pay $50-$150 each, which is far from what I make in writing about other topics, like health and fitness. I also started to lose track of why I like to read, which I posted about in my last update. Reading was no longer a hobby. It was a job. So I pulled back from my original goal RW goal and re-thought where I wanted to be.
That lead me back to where I started my book dork quest: a blog. I had been blogging about the South Jersey Shore and my book writing process at downtheshorewithjen.blogspot.com, so I started a new project called bookaweekwithjen.blogspot.com. I set out to read a book a week, and write about it. I didn’t make any rules about what I could or could not read. New books, old books, kids books, grown up books, mysteries, romances, self help — they all counted toward my tally, and I could also write whatever I wanted to write about them. I didn’t need to smash my opinion into 350 or 650 words. I could relate the book to my life, and even throw in youtube clips of my favorite TV show if I thought it was relevant to whatever memory the book brought to mind.
And an amazing thing happened. The blog has improved my reviews — both on the blog and in print. My writing more energetic, and I’m taking chances. In my review of Jason Roeder’s Oh the Humanity! for the St. Pete Times, I wrote that the book was best used as a bathroom book. I never would have tried that before, but the editor left it in, and then assigned me another review. I’m not picking books to read based on what I think I can sell, but on what I want to read, and I’ve been selling more reviews. Most important, I’m enjoying reading again.
I think one problem with being a writer is that we forget about what a reading, writing — heck, even living — can be and start to see everything as a possible sale. By creating my own forum for book reviews, I’ve found the joy of reading again, and it’s spilling over into my bank account. Who’d have thunk? [Jen Miller]
I like this post a lot, because after close to 20 years of writing and editing for a living, this year I finally started to love it. Yes, that means I had a lot of years where I only liked it, or I hated it, or I hated it sometimes — because I had started to look at everything as a possible sale, as mentioned. I didn’t go after topics I was truly interested in; rather, I took what came along. (Not always — I had some times during which I wrote about stuff I was fascinated by, and my career has been more satisfying than not.) But the blogger (sorry, what’s your name?) hit upon something that I think is overlooked by most freelancers, and that’s the notion of writing about things you would read about, or research, or do, anyway, for the love of the topic or innate curiosity about it. I’m doing this more and more often these days and I’m getting terrific feedback from editors, more sales, and I’m enjoying myself a heck of a lot more than I used to.
Elaine Grant
Take my Renegade Writer e-course on magazine writing:
http://therenegadewriter.com/?page_id=340#elaine
One side effect of blogging is the juices start flowing more smoothly. They have to, you have readers expecting content. Blogging (and I’m including the hundreds of articles I ghostwrote before I really started to focus on my own blog) also builds your confidence as a writer. “Gee, they understood what I meant and seemed to like it.”
I love my blogs. I have three of my own, am about to launch two more, and have involvement in another three. It really is a great way to hone the writing skills and learn how to manage time.
One suggestion I’d like to make is that you leave Blogger and start your own domain. For a start, you will be taken more seriously, especially if the blog is something you will use for promoting your book. Secondly, with Google’s recent changes, readers who are not Google members cannot comment on your blog, which creates a barrier. I know that I will no longer visit Blogger sites unless I already had a relationship with the blogger before the recent changes.
It is not terribly hard to import the data from Blogger to your own domain. I use WordPress as a blogging platform (the software you install). Many web hosts already include blogging software as part of their package.
Good luck with all of it!
Linda -
Great suggestion! I’m going to be doing that with my shore blog soon, but hadn’t thought about doing it for the book blog. Thanks!
Jen
Jen,
Glad to hear about all your successes. I use WordPress for some blogs I write for my company and I will caution that for a non-tech person, WP can be FAR more complicated than I ever thought possible after using Blogger for so long. The upside is that there are more cool features you can use, but the code can get messy if you don’t know what you’re doing (I had a team of IT guys helping me and it still got messy at times). I think that there IS a way to use Blogger on your own domain name, but I haven’t explored that option yet.
Susan
I agree its really important to be passionate and in love with your blog than merely counting the green in adsense or affiliate products..
whatever is so great about word press. everyone seems to be using it ??
I use blogger.com for my blogs, and have used WordPress through this site. I admit that I prefer blogger, but that’s just me. I know a lot of people who prefer typepad…
@Susan J.: WordPress has become much easier to use over the last year with the addition of widgets to control your sidebar elements. Just make sure you use a theme which supports them (widgets). You can use the hosted blogs at wordpress.com (similar to blogger), and pay $15 a year to use your own domain (which you register separately).
@vineet nair: WordPress truly is more flexible than any blogging platform I know of, and I’ve dug into them all. But the main thing could be that in Blogger commenter’s names are linked to their profile. Comments are encouraged when readers get a link directly back to their own site, and especially if the “nofollow” is removed (which you can do on WordPress by the use of a plugin).
@ Terry: The main problems we ran into were 1) our permalinks were not set up correctly at first so we had to go back and fix a lot of messages left on other blogs and forums (a nightmare that would never happen with Blogger) and 2) the hyperlink box is screwed up so we have to hand code many of the links (has something to do with tiny MCE, which is foreign to me). Our IT department doesn’t know how to fix the second one, so if anyone has suggestions, let me know!
Susan J.: next time that happens (if it does), you can create a redirect on your own site rather than having to go back and fix dozens of posted links. You use your htaccess file and basically tell the server that when someone visits X bad link it goes to Y good link. I have dozens of them from moving pages around for about five years.
I did have trouble with the permalinks at first. In fact, Raven’s Roads, which I first set up on WordPress last January (before that it was just a static HTML site) is still not quite how I want it, and I’m thinking of starting with a fresh install.
You can get the people at WordPress to install it for you, too. It’s part of the package.
Just don’t stick with the ugly default theme.
Sorry to hijack the conversation, Jen! For some reason, IT determined that it wasn’t worth doing all the redirects, so we handled it individually. Now the big problem is Blank Box Syndrome.
I blog solely for the enjoyment of it, and have two blogs.
http://www.kristenfischer.com/myblog.htm
and the blog for my book:
http://www.creativelyselfemployed.com/blog.htm
Jen, so cool to find another Jersey writer! Congrats on your book!