Why Blog? Just Because

May 2, 2016 writeanne17 Comments

image © 360b via shutterstock.com

It started as one thing but became something quite different…

It was back in January 2010, having just published my first novel, that I began writing this blog. The word on online-writer-street was (and still is), that as an author, it was advisable to have a blog in order to raise your authorly profile and to alert potential readers to your masterpieces and where they could buy them.

So after a bit of research I chose WordPress to be the host for my blog. I liked its ease of use, even for an old, not very tech savvy bird like me. I also liked the wide choice of style and appearance that WordPress has to choose from.

To start with I blogged mainly about my writing. I wrote about the process, motivation and road to publication and beyond. At first the number of people viewing my posts was low. But ever so gradually the numbers grew. People started to ‘like’ the posts and comments started to come in. I also visited and began to follow other people’s blogs.

Later I linked my posts to my Twitter account, so that I could alert folks to new posts. And over the years I reviewed and updated the look and type of content on my blog and I also got my own domain of putitinwriting.me

And now? Now Put It In Writing is my online hub. It’s my home on the web. Yes, I have two author websites – one for each of my author identities – but they’re really just shop windows for my work. And yes, I have two author pages on Facebook where I engage with the readers of my books. But it’s on the blog that I write and share the stuff that matters most to my writing soul.

Nowadays after 268 posts, I write about books I’ve read, I write about my experiences, thoughts and reflections and sometimes I even write about my writing. I hope to entertain, give pause for thought and to inform.

But I no longer do it to sell books. I’m not sure it ever had that effect anyway. I blog because I love it. I enjoy writing the posts and I enjoy the comments and interaction that my posts generate.

And I get just as much enjoyment from reading others’ blogs. I follow a lot of other blogs here on WordPress and elsewhere, covering a wide variety of topics and types of writing. By engaging with fellow bloggers’ posts, I in turn, am entertained, made to think and informed. I read my fellow bloggers posts, comment on and share them on Twitter. And they do the same for me. And it’s through blogging, and the often related use of Twitter, that I feel like I’m part of a mutually supportive community of readers and writers.

The bloggers I follow are, by definition, all writers. They include fellow novelists, book bloggers who love reading and reviewing what they’ve read, and others who are commentators on all sorts of interesting topics.

Below I’ve listed just a few of my favourite bloggers –

Some wise and wonderful author bloggers include:

Helen Mackinven at https://helenmackinven.wordpress.com

Anne Stenhouse at https://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/

Shelley Sackier at https://peakperspective.com/

Bryn Donovan at http://www.bryndonovan.com/

Summer Pierre at https://summerpierre.wordpress.com/

Henry Chamberlain at https://comicsgrinder.com/category/henry-chamberlain/

Martin Griffin at http://www.martingriffinbooks.com/

Some of the insightful and dedicated book bloggers who I’ve ‘met’ through the wonderful Book Connectors group on Facebook include:

Linda at https://lindasbookbag.com/

Hayley at https://rathertoofondofbooks.com

Anne at http://beingannereading.blogspot.co.uk

Joanne at https://portobellobookblog.com

Then there’s nature writer and artist and real life friend, Jan who blogs at https://janhendry.com/

There’s spot-on observational post writer Andrea at https://andreabadgley.com

There’s truck driving, Shakespeare buff and art lover George at http://myshakespearejourney.wordpress.com/

There’s lovely writer and photographer Marsha at http://tchistorygal.wordpress.com/

And finally, there’s the educational and engaging official blog of the Culloden Battlefield and Visitor Centre at https://cullodenbattlefield.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/270-years-ago/

One last thing before you go, why do you read and or/write a blog? Do you have a sense of an online tribe and if so where does that come from? Do leave your thought in the comments below.

Themes: Not Just for Literary Fiction

April 25, 2016 writeanne5 Comments

A Fictional Hierarchy

There seems to be a consensus which says that literary fiction is first and foremost about themes and that commercial fiction has character, plot and setting at the forefront. There also seems to be an apparent hierarchy to the above elements of fiction which places themes above the other three. And this gives rise to a belief that literary fiction, by concentrating mainly on theme, is written by more intelligent authors for more intelligent readers.

An Artificial Divide

But I’ve never really got the divide between literary and commercial fiction. It seems artificial and rather snobbish to me. As a reader I’m looking for a good read and I’ve found great books on both the alleged sides. And, as an author of contemporary fiction, I don’t sit down to write a literary or a commercial book. I set out to write a book.

Basic Story Writing Includes Themes

image copyright Suriya KK via shutterstock.com.

When I was a primary school teacher, teaching my pupils how to write stories, I highlighted all four ingredients: character, plot, setting and theme. I didn’t see one of those elements as more important or requiring more intelligence to develop. And as a professional writer, I still don’t.

What became obvious with my pupils was that everyone differed in their preferred element for getting their story started. Some loved to start with a character and that was what led everything else. Others preferred setting and so on. And there were some who were just plain inspired by whatever.

But what they were all aiming for was to write a good story and to impress their teacher.

And in my own writing, the same four elements are equally crucial when I’m creating a story. I play around with them all in my novels. For me, it’s usually a character who comes first and then, as I get to know that character, the setting and plot suggest themselves and the themes just appear.

But like my pupils, my overall aim is to write a good story that will impress my readers.

My Themes

However, although I don’t set out first and foremost to address a particular theme, like I said, themes do appear and they become integral to the whole.

In Change of Life, the characters must deal with the themes of marriage, family life, secrets and mortality as their stories play out. In Displacement it is bereavement, belonging and relationships, as well as the politics of war that drive the plot. And in my children’s novel, The Silver Locket, the story of the three main characters’ time travelling mission deals with friendship, bullying, the loss of a parent, and increasing independence from adults.

And in my work-in-progress, Settlement, which is the sequel to Displacement, the themes are commitment, purpose, love and the politics of peace.

And Finally

There is also, in my adult fiction, an over-riding theme, and that is – there is life after the age of 45. All the main themes of life persist into middle-age and beyond. Life is as messy, interesting, frustrating and wonderful at 60 as it is at 20.

Whether this insight in particular, or my use of theme in general in my writing makes me a literary type author, I’ve no idea and doesn’t particularly concern me. But I hope I do produce a good read.

What themes do you most like to read or write about? And do you differentiate between literary and commercial fiction? Please do leave your comments below.

Maintaining Focus as a Writer

April 5, 2016 writeanne5 Comments

shutterstock_165698114 — image via shutterstock

A question that’s been concerning me of late: should I, as a writer, take the wide landscape view when deciding what to work on, or should I zoom in and maintain a tight, close-up focus?

Yes, the above sentence is a metaphor. Hey, I’m a writer. What do you expect?

But seriously, the wide view or the close focus question is something I’ve been thinking about recently as regards my writing.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I’m currently working on my next novel, the sequel to Displacement. However I haven’t added a word to it for about a month. It’s not that I haven’t been at the desk and it’s not the case that I’ve done no writing in that time.

And to be fair to me, during this monthly hiatus, one of the weeks was taken up with having the family, including young grandchildren, to stay over Easter, which was lovely but quite rightly precluded getting anywhere near my desk. And there was also the weekend away at the Scottish Writers annual conference – another lovely and worthwhile time away from the keyboard.

But the rest of the month I was at my desk. I just wasn’t working on the novel. No, I was working on entries for writing competitions, writing blog posts, writing book reviews and doing all the apparently necessary online networking that writers have to do nowadays. I was spread rather thinly, spinning many plates, pick your own metaphor…

I was also procrastinating as far as the novel is concerned. I’ve hit the metaphorical wall (okay, I’ll stop with the metaphors now). The novel has stalled and having lots of other writing, and writing related, tasks to do gave me the perfect excuse to put it to one side.

However, I’ve now got a grip and regained some focus.

This is partly down to me giving myself a talking to – a talking to that involves reiterating that procrastination is for wimps and requires to be worked through and overcome. And it’s partly down to something the keynote speaker, crime novelist, Caro Ramsay, said in a workshop she gave at the aforementioned Scottish Writers’ Conference.

I realised, just as in any other job, I needed to prioritise. I needed to remind myself why I write – answer I love it – and what it is I most enjoy – I most enjoy being immersed in my characters’ lives. I also needed to remind myself that I’m in the privileged position of having been able to take early retirement from my teaching job in order to have more time to write. But that time waits for no-one and it’s fairly galloping along.

And Caro Ramsay’s words also came back to me and helped me sort out my priorities. She’d asked those of us attending her writing workshop why we went in for competitions, why if we were novel writers did we not just get on and write our novels?

She pointed out that she had no pieces of writing ‘in a drawer’. Everything she writes is for publication and gets published. This wasn’t said in order to boast about her publishing success, but rather to emphasise the point that all her writing has one purpose, i.e. to produce and publish a novel. She was urging focus and commitment. And this is someone who works fulltime as an osteopath and who writes in her ‘spare’ time AND who has published many novels with major publishers, Penguin.

Now there’s nothing wrong with writing competitions per se. I’ve entered many in my time with varying levels of success. Something I find very useful about them is the deadlines they provide and in some cases the feedback that is given. However, they’re mostly short stories and I’ve now come to accept that writing shorts is not my forte. And I must admit I’d recently got sidetracked by the whole competitions thing.

And I accept that social media networking, reading and reviewing the work of others, and writing my blog are all not just a vital way of connecting with readers and other writers, they’re also enjoyable in their own right.

image via shutterstock

BUT novel writing is my thing. It’s my strength, my first love and my passion. And so I must get back to prioritising what I love the most. Like Caro Ramsay, I want all my writing published. So I’m going to focus on what’s got a chance of being worthy of publication and that’s definitely the novels. I also have a sense of loyalty to my readers. I promised them a sequel and a sequel that shall have.

Therefore I’ve put a moratorium on competition entries for the foreseeable, and I’ve made diary commitments to when and to how much time I’ll give to the different aspects of my writing life each week with the novel getting the biggest share. No excuses, no procrastinating. I show up and even if I write drivel, I get on with the damn book, I move it forward.

I know that sometimes my focus will falter, sometimes real life will get in the way of the imaginary one, but that’s fine and I’ll attempt always to pay back any novel writing time lost. I might fall, but I’ll get right back on the horse – sorry – metaphor crept in there!

So here’s to getting Settlement finished and out by the end of the year. And yes doing this post was in the diary for today.

What sidetracks you and how do you stay focussed on what matters most?