Buckle Down and Blog
I’ve gotten a bit carried away with social media posts lately. It’s hard not to talk about places where you’re having success.
And it is not unreasonable to believe that success on social media will lead to success in publishing, as a famous author once said.
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.
Gore Vidal
I must say I have gotten considerably better at being LOUD.
But This is a Writing Blog
Though I allow myself the freedom to explore any subject I wish, this blog is better served by focus on a single topic, and the only topic I could cover exclusively is the subject of writing.
Now that I have already unfolded all the secrets of getting big on Twitter, it’s time to buckle down and tilt sharply back to divulging the great and dreadful secrets of writing.
And there is reason to take my blogging duties more seriously now, as a disturbing new trend has emerged.
I Have Readers Now
I…was not prepared for this.
Now, it’s been pointed out, by one commenter, that if I’ve made such a killing on Twitter, why don’t I have a lot of commenters?
The answer is simple: people are both reading and commenting on my blog posts, but they post those comments on Twitter itself. I can’t say I blame them, as who wants to give their name and email address to some stranger just so they can have the privilege of commenting on his personal website?
But the site stats reveal an influx of readers, many of them referred by social media platforms. The increases vary from day to day, and are not always gigantic, but the days when I would sometimes get zero hits are over. The blog has returning customers now, and even a few people courageous enough to delve the archives and start reading older posts.
If I could somehow get these people to leave comments, that would be a bonus, but the task at hand is to keep people coming. And the most efficient way to do that is to dust off the good stuff from the archives that no one saw at the time, and present them to this new audience.
But recycling my old stuff will not sustain this audience for long. The creation of new content, in line with my best work (which is all writing related) requires me to get back to my roots, as it were.
To Sum it Up
I can’t say, with any authority, that any of this is getting me closer to my dreams of publication.
But it’s definitely going somewhere. I am no longer haunted by the specter of pointlessness as I hurl blog posts blindly into the void. Now I know that they’re actually reaching eyes somewhere. And whether or not those eyes are getting inspired to read on, I have to care about them.
Maybe I’ll be as successful here as I am on Twitter. Or maybe not. But nothing else has worked, so I might as well follow this thread to wherever it leads.
For better or worse, Mr. Horne is back.
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