Go Blog Yourself

I've read a great many of posts, looking for topics to ramble on about. Some things you'll see again and again-- content is king, nobody cares about your life story, people want to hear you talk about them. Now, I wouldn't say it's wrong but it's just as true that a blog does more service to the reader when it does a service to the blogger as well.

There is some weak back-pedaling when it comes to the caveats. No one cares about your life UNLESS you're popular. However, it's the willingness to share the honest parts of their journey that often precedes the popularity. 

It's points like that, however, that shine a light on the pitfalls of success. There are people that do all the right things, take all the right advice, gone where the higher rates of success have worn deeper paths. However, no matter how broad or personal the content, the numbers are speculation. Placing all our bets on one horse can be as bad as the horse running the wrong way on the track.

I've heard quite a few horror stories from people excited about being chosen for publication, only to realize they fell into a vanity press scam. Or they hear all about how integral it is to dump wads of cash into advertising, only to not even make back what they spent to get people to buy their material. Or they trad-pub with a publisher that only pushes their top authors, which sends them to drift and with no rights to their work to do anything about it. Oh, and you HAVE to have an email newsletter! But you dump all that time into making one and it ends up in people's spam box.

There are just so many insistences on how to do things right in an industry that really has zero guarantees. This is precisely why you have to decide what this journey means to you. Does your content interest and challenge you or are you just recycling what content seems to nail the most traffic? Even a blog might be something you decide cuts into too much time you could use otherwise. 

All writers believe their precious first published book is a bestseller. They might not be wrong about that, but that status may be 30 years away. I know that could be a crippling thought, but for authors whose reality followed that model, there was no amount of blogging, newsletters, or advertising that could have altered that. And I mean, these were people that sold hardcopies out of the back of their car, started their own press-- weren't just sitting on their book being on a store list. When the crushing disappointment of a lackluster start wore off, they continued to write. They wrote through their pain, their passion, their determination to build their library.

It had little to do with quantity, mind you. If I sat down and just scribbled out crap and hit publish, I would make my name radioactive. I could push out hundreds of books and it wouldn't make a difference. However, they whiled away their years, writing more novels or building the rich continuity of a series. I have joked about building a catalogue of work so big you can't ignore it, but it's the only farsighted goal I'm serious about. Building a body of work is more about the temptation of seeing how you develop than the number of books that it takes.

I know JK Rowling gets a ton of shit for contradicting her own canon, but realistically, you can't fault someone for playing with the possibilities of a world they started. Especially one that sparks toys, clothes and entire sections of a theme park. The Marvel Universe did so, for certain. Now, Miss Rowling can tell you what's canon and what isn't but no author can police your own perceptions. Fanfiction, fanart and so on have been ways that people play with their own possibilities. And of course, there are fans that don't understand how fan works actually work and pitch a fit when they see their he-man superheroes portrayed as gay, other races or other genders.

*Whines* well, why can't they write their own stories? I don't think people that ask that will be satisfied with any answer you give, but there are many reasons people often play in established creations. It's a great place to start. You learn how to research, how to deviate from that research even. You also find communities of people that discuss theories and possibilities to enhance your choices. With your own work, you don't have that same enthusiasm from others to start with. Some people just want to be fans, without any aspirations of creating something new. Some aspire elsewhere, maybe joining those writing teams to create those games and comics in that universe so they just want to show their chops or flexibility. Really, they don't have to justify this to be within their rights to enjoy it.

Hell, I'm sure someone takes issue with this post, this blog, my body of work, my aspirations. Got a problem with it; go blog yourself. 

Ultimately a writer has to write for themselves. Even when they write for an audience, the choice to continue is one that must be made over and over. What you write about, who you write for-- whatever you choose to guide you, one thing is certain: there is no manual. Anyone who tells you differently is probably trying to sell you one.