Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Writerly Wednesday

So for this writerly Wednesday I thought I would present to you the question of why do you blog?

Recently over at Kidlit, Agent Mary Kole had presented the idea that she doesn’t believe that fiction writer’s need to blog to build a platform. In fact she’s not really in favor of it at all. She has her good points like writers should actually focus on their WIP instead of their Twitter, but I disagree in the fact that we don’t’ need to blog.

What does blogging do for individuals? Well, for some of us, we have 9-5 jobs that don’t’ let us have any sort of creativity. Writing those blogs is the only way we can escape our mundane work environment and be able to do something that lets us express our creativity while we are at work.

Kole also did discuss that it does help build that writer community, which it totally does. Beyond my computer my writer community is very limited, but as soon as I log onto Twitter it is just filled with other writers who are sharing their woes of querying or asking about my WIP. It’s nice to have that community that is so supportive of your work, even though you don’t know them in person. My non-writer friends might just say something like ‘oh that’s cool you wrote a book,’ but my writer friends will pry “So how’d that agent request go?” It’s not that I don’t like my real life friends, but unless you have that writer’s community outside of the cyber world it gets a bit tough sometimes. Like with my husband, he doesn’t understand how I can spend hours editing or why I send out tweets asking “Does anyone know what highway department workers smell like?” (For the record: they smell like summertime- like hose water, fresh cut grass, and sunlight radiating off of newly stained front porches.)

This blog is not just about my writing, though I do talk about it a lot. This place became a sanctuary for my inner punching bag. I don’t just talk about my writing, but everything else that I feel needs to be “fought for.” You will see this in my interviews with different writers, you will see this when I talk about my own writing. As long as I’m a fighter than I am going to keep writing these blogs for you to read.

In other news on this Writerly Wednesday…I have two fulls out on MY PAPER HEART, so now I’m just kind of sitting here and waiting. I think the best news was when an agent who is very “backed up” e-mailed me 8 days after reading my partial and asked for my full. That’s a pretty awesome feeling and I wanted to share it with my blog friends even more than my non-blog friends.

I think I’m rambling now… I should really go back to that big person job that I have. *eye roll*

2 comments:

  1. I'm with you, the writing community is invaluable. I can talk to very many people I know IRL about writing, they just don't get it. I can't talk about what I want to do with my life (agenting and writing) with them because they don't even know what lit agents are. It's frustrating. But I get online and all of that disappears because suddenly everyone knows and cares, and it's wonderful. :)

    And SQUEE congrats on the fulls!! Keeping my fingers crossed for you!

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  2. I'm in a fantastic critique group and I can talk about writing and the business with them, but outside of that people I know just don't get it. So I like being on blogs and Twitter, even though it's time-consuming. I learn a lot about writing and marketing.

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