Proof-reading

And already, despite checking over my notes several times and asking someone else to do so too, I see errors in my last post.

See, that's the good thing about working for a newspaper or a publisher, you get an editor. When you're blogging it's only you - and the cat/toddler/dog/potplant. None of whom, in my experience, can spell for toffee and as for grammar, they think that's someone who comes round for tea.

Blogging Masterclass Notes

Notes from my section of The Master Class on Blogging at the Edinburgh International Book Festival August 2009

Caroline Dunford

1. Why I blog and my publishing experience

- I started blogging on LiveJournal when encouraged by a friend because I was working from home and somewhat isolated. I’ve been blogging for seven years.

- I then started using it as a warm up exercise for the day

- within a few months I had chosen to lock my journal so that only people I allowed could see it. These didn’t have to be people I knew in real life, but they were likely to be ones who knew people I knew or who were interested in similar things via a community –lj has community blogs where you can discuss common interests

-through LJ I found my local writers group, kept in touch with my friends and got involved in my first voice acting job.

- I also got a lot of feedback from my readers about how much they enjoyed my tales of my two year olds antics.

- because of this I took it to a publisher, who had previously published diaries (not blogs) and asked it they would be interested? Because the blog was locked and not public they were happy for me to include parts of my journal and even to use it as way of locating key readers, a form of viral marketing. However, they decided it had to be more than the blog, and so I incorporated a number of fact panels – about 40-60 split.

- it’s still selling. How to Survive the Terrible Twos: diary of a mother under Siege It has also been published in Italian and last week the Spanish rights were sold.

2. Blogs and their purpose

- is this a blog you hope will become a book? If so then it has to contain a journey, some kind of story arc. It has to be no less entertaining than an ordinary book. There needs to be a sense of progress – most blogs won’t make books. Everyone is writing a book – even their cats are writing and some of the cats are doing better than their owners.

- are you doing primarily for fun and you’d be happy if people read it?

- are you seeking writing validation?

- is it to publicise your work? (You lose first publishing rights if it is open on the net.) Blogging about your progress can help gather you an audience. There is a possibility of making a grass roots connection with your potential fanbase.

- Are you trying to raise your own profile (as a writer, politician, campaigner, etc)

- are you blogging for a cause?

- is it about social networking?

Whichever you choose it affects your writing style, but not the amount of time someone will read – generally you’re only getting their attention for a couple of minutes. This means you need to be more tabloid than academic journal!

- choice of platform, many options: Google’s own Blogger is very easy to start with, lots of handholding and it’s free. www.blogspot.com. Wordpress can give you more options, but it can also be more complicated. LiveJournal and Dreamwidth lend themselves to closed rather than public journals. Facebook, MySpace and Bebo tend to have the blog as a tiny part of a very busy screen and are more social networking sites.

But with all of these be wary of following the shiny. Better to choose and stick with a platform.

3. Psychological aspects of blogging (exposure, over familiarity from strangers, keeping private life in its place) Most people are nice, but

- keep personal details, children’s names, physical location out of it.

- you will always offend someone – there are so many people out there. Don’t take it personally.

- it offers an illusion. People will think they really know you. On occasion even that you are friends.

- whatever you put out there stays – don’t write in anger or when you overemotional in any way. Even if you delete it, someone somewhere will have seen it and the more you regret what you wrote the more it will be noticed! Google are continually capturing content on the net and the chances are it will be in a cache that someone with a little know-how can access.

4. Becoming an unpaid journalist

- http://writeforward.blogspot.com last updated 18^th April until recently!

– although LJ is updated every week.

- blogging can be compulsive.

- do you find yourself constantly checking for comments – get them emailed to you!

- when you discover your journal is being read then it’s tempting to write more, and expand on whatever is proving popular. This is fine as long as you have time. Regular blogging that fits around your work schedule

- blogging is a very useful tool and other than advertising (which Helen will speak about) it doesn’t pay the bills. Has to be on top of work rather than instead of. Personally I dislike blogs with advertising on them and won’t read one that is plastered with adverts.

5. Twitter – also known as microblogging

- If you haven’t gone to www.twitter.com then do so.

- It’s much quicker to write 140 characters and less of a drain on your time.

- You can feed it through your blog

- keeps things active

- also writing in 140 characters forces you to be concise and salient – no space for waffling or ranting.

but

- can be very compulsive

- can be easier to let personal details out in short thoughts without realizing.

- good idea to have more than one accounts ie one that is for genuine friends and one that is blog associated.

6. Google Analytics, keywords

- sign up on Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analysis. All you need to do is paste a given segment of code into your blog page once and it does all the statistics for you.

- use Google Analytics to check your blog’s effectiveness, but don’t get too caught up in it. There is so much information there it probably includes the building blocks of the universe!

- Google also allows you to very easily set up an RSS feed (Really Simply Syndication, which means someone can register to have your blog feed through an aggregator (a tool for capturing chosen blogs) rather than having to hunt for your blog individually.

- pingoat – helps get your site noticed. Each time you blog you can go to www.pingoat.com and feed in your blog name, url, xml (rss feed) and select which services you want pingoat to target. (If you do this too frequently pingoat may suggest you try again later.)

Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publishes them. Esssentially it lets a variety of services know you’ve updated and they automatically check on keywords, topics etc and feed this to various sites or particular interest services.

- be immediate if a current hot topic is relevant. Don’t do something like “I haven’t got Swine Flu but I do have chocolate” to get the swine flu hits. It will annoy people.

- you want to be found to be trustworthy and reliable. Regular communication in a clearly defined area, so people know what it’s worth their while to take time out of their day and read you. Loyalty and following.

Things I didn’t say due to time, but are important!

- when you’re writing a blog treat each entry like a newspaper article. This means write top- down. All the most important information (who, what, where, when and how) should be in your opening paragraph. By all means finish in a neat and clever way, but be aware that people will only scan the opening to see if they are interested. Anything really important or revelatory should be in the top section of your piece.

- be aware that posting in the public domain opens you up to the laws of defamation (Scotland) and libel/slander (rest of UK) and whatever other laws of insult there are worldwide. Don’t be rude or insulting unless you’re prepared to go to court. Personal opinion, personal worldview and verifiable facts to lesser and greater extents are legal defenses, but it’s complicated and unless you’re campaigning and have some kind of legal support think about the ramifications of what you’re writing. Remember even paper journalists must do this. We have freedom of speech, but also there are rights within law to protect reputations for good reason.

- Proof-read your work before posting!

Life after blogging

Today I'm at the Edinburgh International Book Festival talking about blogging. Although I regularly write on my live-journal account this account has been rather quiet of late.

How to Survive the Terrible Twos: Diary of a Mother under Siege came out of my live journal account and is still selling. In fact only this week I've heard that Spanish rights are in the pipeline.

But this journal has been somewhat neglected. I'll be talking about that and why that is. The short version is that I ended up spending so much time researching and writing about ebooks that I realized my own work was suffering.

Since the posts here have slowed I've been doing what I'm meant to be doing. By Feb 2010 I will have delivered four books and two plays since Jan 2009 as well as doing my best to actively support my publishers publicity campaigns, doing workshops and becoming Hon Sec for the Society of Authors in Scotland.

I am intending on coming back to this blog. It is, after all, my professional site. But it's only now that I'm learning how to balance blogging and real work. That's a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today.

As an experiment, if you come to my talk today, and then come here - please leave a comment.

I'm back and so are ebooks...

It's quite horrific to realize I haven't been here since Christmas. But then that's always the problem with following a writer's blog; we do occasionally go off and write stuff - like proper stuff, books and things. 

Anyway I'm back. 

Let's start with a little game. I've over at Books from Scotland blogging about E-books and digital watermarking, how ebooks were around in the 90s and how ebooks are lighter than real books. This piece was proof-read by three people and we still missed stuff. It's an interesting article, and even more fun if you like proving to yourself you're better than any proof-reader. Have a look here. 

Christmas Giveaway!

Lyrical Press is giving away free my magical Christmas story "A Christmas Star." To claim your copy in pdf file email promotions@lyricalpress.com. In the subject line put Request for A Christmas Star by Caroline Dunford and within a very short space of time my story will be winging its way to you as a little extra to read under the tree. Please also drop by Lyrical to read the associated blog post (It's under the blog title Lyrical Press Holiday Giveaway Story 5) and drop a comment - but most importantly remember to request your copy of the story by email now. It's only free for a couple of days!

Have a wonderful holiday everyone. Be safe and Be kind!

Cx

Very Short Play

Just heard a short piece of mine "Obsession" will be being read at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh at Words, Words, Words on Monday 8th December at 8pm.

The event is free, in a bar and my piece is only a few minutes long. So really, if you're local there is very little reason not to attend!

Breathing Space

I have a new super-power. I am able to make others turn green. My ability manifests with the words, "I'm taking December off." 

No-one has been quite foolish enough to suggest "this writing lark is obviously a bit of a breeze'. But then they don't need to. It's written all over their faces. Other writers exhibit a much paler shade of a similar hue. But there reaction is usually along the lines of 'I wish I could get my schedule into that kind of order."

The thing is that for the last far too many months I have been writing in the overlap of son no 1 attending school and son no 2 sleeping. I have been writing late into the evening. I have been writing every weekend. I have notched up no less than three thousand words a day and in one memorable weekend sixteen thousand words. Really, I'm ready for a rest.

The harsh reality is that writing very rarely brings rewards equal to effort; no matter how talented you are. Essentially, you have to have something loose in your head to write professionally. You need to be driven enough that you do not mind that the creation of work will literally consume your life and will often yield less reward than a below average national wage. You need to be mad.

Of course all writers hope that the next book will be the one that is the best seller, that buys them the castle in the country and the gin palace - or perhaps, and this is a bit beyond the bounds of credibility, earns out enough to pay next year's heating bills. I don't think I have ever met a writer who doesn't have hope that their work will be internationally recognized and their lifestyle immeasurably altered by their work. Because, you know, writers work ridiculously hard. 

Okay, so we're not doing manual labour. Currently the only active part of me other than my brain is my very busy fingers. But the hours and the level of organization and concentration required are quite extraordinary. If you don't believe me, try it.

But the real rub is this: if you do it for the money you will never succeed. If you do it because you can't help yourself, because you have to write or you will lose all grip on reality, then you a small chance of success... although to be honest you've still got a better chance of getting rich by buying a lottery ticket.

But even to a writer as obsessive as myself there must be things of more importance than writing. If there is nothing else than humanity vanishes in a puff of a word checker and prose becomes as inspiring as lettuce left at the back of the fridge for a week.

Anyway, as I used to write in my university essays, taking all the above into consideration my conclusion is that while I am mad, while I am driven to write, while I will never stop writing no matter who does or does not publish me, I have earned the right to take December off. Above all I need to take the month off because I owe it to others even more than to myself.

It's No 2's first Christmas. No 2 has had a rocky start. He's been hospitalized a couple of times already in his short life and we've been very, very scared for him. But now he's doing brilliantly, thriving and wanting his Mama. And you know, that's one thing that will stop me writing. I might push on writing despite my own health issues, but my family, partner and my sons,  are my centre, my support, my inspiration and the very heart of me. Everything I am springs from them and this Christmas is theirs.