Published monthly, on the 15th of each month
Published and edited by Angela Booth

In this issue:

Editorial: Should you blog?

Excerpt from Pro Write Workshop #12, "Blog Your Writing": Benefits and advantages of public blogging for writers and other creatives

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Editorial: Should you blog?

Should YOU blog? I get several email messages every week asking me about the pros and cons of blogging, and I hope that this month's excerpt from our Pro Write workshop "Blog Your Writing" will help you to make a decision.

"How much time do you spending blogging each day?" is the most popular question. It takes me around 15 minutes to write and post an item of 100 to 200 words. Therefore, depending on how many items I post on a particular day, it might take around half an hour to an hour.

Your blog is what you choose to make it. You don’t need to spend hours on it every day. Many bloggers only post a couple of times a week.

Hope you enjoy the excerpt.

All best wishes from

Angela

Copyright © 2005 by Angela Booth. All rights reserved.

All writers who are serious about writing and selling need a blog. Or blogs. Let's look at the advantages of blogging for both new and established writers.

Blogging advantages for new and aspiring writers —

• If you're a new writer, a blog gives you the confidence and ability to write for an audience. Please notice that I put confidence ahead of ability. As a new writer, you need the confidence to START. Some writers are born with the confidence to send their work off to editors, but they’re in the minority.
  
  I've even heard of professional writers admitting to collapsing into tears when they send off work that means a lot to them, so it's not surprising that aspiring writers feel that the process of writing for public consumption is overwhelming.

• Your blog helps you to get comfortable with words. Inexperienced writers "write". Experienced writers just say what they're got to say — you can hear the writer's "voice" behind the words. Developing this voice takes a lot of writing. A blog lets you do that writing in a low-risk, comfortable arena.

• Your blog enhances your creativity. Writing begets writing. The more you write, the more you'll have to write about. If you commit to blogging, the knowledge that you need to collect material for your blog stimulates your creativity. You'll come up with ideas for your blog, and for other writing too.

• You can use your blog as a writing sample. When you're a new writer, you don’t have any credits. This means that editors are hesitant to assign commissions to you. Your blog proves that you can write, and gives a commissioning editor an idea of what your style is like. Add your blog's URL to query letters and proposals that you send to editors, and invite editors to visit your blog. The fact that you have a blog lets editors know that you're serious about writing.

Blogging advantages for established writers —

• Your blog helps you to build a platform for your writing career. Your platform is a base of readers, people who know you and your work. Your platform is a ready-made audience. Yes, publishing a book will build your platform, BUT publishers want you to have a platform first. If you have a built-in audience, then publishing your books is less risky.

• Your blog gives you the courage to find your voice and be yourself. I mentioned voice above. Your writer's voice can only develop with practice. It's as distinctive as a fingerprint. Forensic word-use document analysis proved that Newsweek columnist Joe Klein was Anonymous, the author of the roman a clef novel, Primary Colors. His voice was just as distinctive as yours.

• Your blog gives you contacts. The writing world is now global. You have a global audience. This means global competition. This is a good thing. It means increased markets for your work. The blogosphere is a huge collection of bloggers, people who blog for fun, or who blog for marketing and promotion for their business, or some other work-related reason, and bloggers talk to other bloggers.
  
  Your blog, with its RSS feed, permalinks, and comments (see the Glossary) features makes you part of the blogosphere, the social network of bloggers.

• People can find you online. Blogs get indexed by search engines FAST. It only took a couple of days for my initial Angela Booth's Writing Blog items to start appearing in Google. With a Web site, you'd expect to get indexed in a couple of months. This means that your blog will get you more readers, faster, than a Web site.

Note: I'm not suggesting that you don’t need a Web site. However, if you don’t have the time/ money/ knowledge to create a site, get a blog.