Why writing a blog matters?

writing a blog

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

Let’s talk about writing!… blog writing.

Why should a writer maintain a blog? Why should they deviate from their fiction writing? Why should they waste time in other project than his books?

Having a blog requires us to learn new skills and put them to use. Not just gaining writing skills more adequate to the blog format, but also research skills on our favorite blogging themes, technical skills on a miriade os subjects connected to this format, and other creative mind paths that help us write consistently.

From my personal experience, I stand by every reason I’ll mention bellow, in this article. I have been a witness to them all.

It has been a fun trip – sometimes not so fun but exasperating one – devoting part of my attention to a blog. My Portuguese blog is celebrating its fifteen birthday next month, of regular two/three weekly publications. And my English one has just started and is already teaching me tons about this new blogging world.

It requires a lot of constant work, I give you that. But it gives me such pleasure to have these writing projects always on the move, and feeling that I can share something that might make a difference in other peoples creative lives. There’s no feeling like the one of receiving feedback from one of my articles.

I will leave you some well-known writer’s blogs so you can see for yourself what I am talking about, and what we can do with it: Neil Gaiman; Ursula K. Le Guin; Joanna Penn;

So… why should a writer maintain a blog?

Writing practice…

Practice makes perfect, at least that’s what’s how the saying goes. Blogging requires a constant flux of writing and this is good practice per se, isn’t it?

Nurture Creative Writings

Writing in a different format from the usual fiction, non-fiction or journal practice, nurtures other types of publications. It pushes us to be creative outside our normal writing formats.

Develop our Researching Skills

We learn a lot while we research for blog writing and we can become real experts on our subjects. Also we keep research as a constant practice which allow us to hone our researching skills.

Broadens our Knowledge and Themes

We have a constant incentive to look for writing subjects, making us more attentive to what goes around in our fields. Writing themes get expanded and thoroughly investigated. And it gives us other themes to talk about besides marketing our published works.

Public Exposure

It gives us public exposure, gets new people to know and visit our website, and broadens our like-minded community of people.

Grow our Reading Community

It helps us reach more possible readers for our other works. We have a chance to show ourselves, and with that to captivate more people that might enjoy our fiction and non-fiction writings.

Gives us Access to Readers

It makes us contact with our readers in a more private way. We get to talk about our personal experiences and to connect with readers in a more direct way. If a person subscribe, it allows us to connect with them on a more regular base.

Unravels Opportunities

It gives us beneficial exposure and other opportunities related to our writing career. We show up and talk about our themes, and our books, and our creative work and, sometimes, work opportunities materialize themselves.

Allows for Other Creative Outlet

It serves as another creative outlet for those of us that like to create in different areas. We get to work on blog writing and on creating content that may be very different from our usual creative pursuits.

Serves as a Life Journal

Sometimes it serves as a journal for our own writing life, or other life experiences. Getting other ideas for what comes next, while sharing some experience with our readers is very common. We use it to work out some of the kinks of some creative projects. We use it as a tool to unwind some concepts about a theme. We use it to share our progress or digress from our plans and goals.

It’s an Outlet of sorts

It can be an outlet when things get tough in the big writing business. We get to talk about what’s bothering us, or about what options there are, or about how we are coping with something. And maybe we find someone that relates to our experience.

Eleven reasons why a writing a blog matters.

And these are just for us, writers. Because if I look at it from the readers perspective, I’m sure I’ll be finding many more.

We are writers because we write, and we may love to write in different formats. I know I do.

We have good examples of this by creatives that wrote on different formats that the usual book. We have letter writers, e-mail writers, list writers, bullet journal writers, song writers, poetry writers…

Having also worked on some blog writings, transforming them into book format, I tell you there are a lot of seeds dwindling in our blog writings that can be properly cared for in other formats.

So, blog writing also gives us seeds for growing new works… 

What do you feel about blogging? Or vlogging? Or other writing formats? What do you favor most?

Do you have a blog waiting to be put into a book format? Talk to me!

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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Don’t let the noise get to you

noise

Hello all! Welcome back to my blog.

So, don’t let the noise get to you…

It has been some intense days here at this corner of the world. Lot’s of noise and inner chatter as usual.

I’ll give you a glimpse…

Christmas🎄 is coming in full speed, which means there’s lot’s of planning and a million of little things to do. Not to mention all the stress related with the shopping🎁 activities.

In these first days of December, I have been trying to rest a bit, because I’m still bothered by a persistent migraine… which really is a pain in the **head** 😅

Also, I find these days are a somewhat transitional period from the NaNoWriMo writing efforts (of 77 600 words) into a ‘what’s next?!?’ phase. And this aggravates me a lot.

And then it is the end of the year phase. Lot’s of reviews, and plans, and other stuff to do… I love to be well rested for planning mode but I figure this year is a no go on the rested mode.

Moving on…

This year I finally got the courage to grab one of my NaNoWriMo winner goodies by Scrivener (courtesy of Scrivener and NaNoWriMo for winning the 2022 challenge of writing the 50 000 words in November). And then I proceeded for installing the software and do the 30 days trial.

I started using it immediately for the project I have been working on, which I called ‘The Shapeshifters’, and I am really loving it.

I’m kind of in a learning process but I can already see the upsides to using this software. I have been hearing so much about it, but I find that I never really grasped what it could do for my writing and editing processes.

I am quite thrilled with it and have already started my editing process for this story.

So… the transitional period got cut really short and on December 2nd I started editing this story☺️

I came across a little quote I took a few weeks ago and it goes like this…

keep it simple

This quote’s context was about the practice of meditation but I figured it is applicable to other kinds of practices.

I have always thought these kinds of things, like Scrivener, were nice to have but quite dispensable. Most of this idea came from a budget tightness that never seems to allow for nice to have’s.

But I’m taking this seriously. I have been writing for decades and I can see this software serving all my writings for different formats and genres.

There is no fixed formula for getting our steps right. No full proof formula to approach our writing practices the best way. No grand scheme that gets us good results.

There are practices, and commitment, and lot’s of work.

All we can expect is to have the courage to look for what works for ourselves. And the insight not to overcomplicate things. And, above all, to refrain from all the noisy channels that keep blaring into our hearts why something shouldn’t be as it is.

It’s better to work with what is. To keep it as simple as possible. And to tune the noise down.

Yes, this is a very complicated time of the year for a lot of us. And we have different reasons for it to be so. I just get to remind myself that I work with what works for me, to keep it as simple as I can, and not permit the bad noise to get to me.

And to renew my commitment with this writing project… now, using Scrivener.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. I hope you have a happy and tranquil December.

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

 

Pantser into Plotter

pantser into plotter

I guess as time passes, and we get to practice more and more of our writing, some things about ourselves are bound to change.

It’s not by chance that most writers start as pantsers and after a while evolve into plotters.

Why? I’ll tell you as much as I’ve lived it. 

something about yourself

I don’t believe this was meant to be taken literally. But, yes. When we start to write our first novel we discover many different things about ourselves.

Not all of them are as deep as implied here. But most most of them are of the life changing variety. 

The 4 Creative Paradigms

Picking up on the Creative Paradigms as explored on ‘Writing Fiction from Dummies’, meaning the methods we may use while writing the first and subsequent drafts, we have:

  • Seat-of-the-pants (write in one sitting, without planning or editing)
  • Edit-as-you-go (write without planning but edit thoroughly as you go)
  • Snowflake (write a general plan, adapting it as you go)
  • Outline (make a detailed plan, than stick to it regardless)

Our beliefs

When we start writing we want to be good immediately. We want to become the best. We learn how to do some tricks (those things that we read and thought them out of this world good) and pray they carry us into an organic, and not too troublesome, writing practice.

But, at that time, we hadn’t put in the how many?!?!?! working hours we need to have some proper insights on the work itself.

The pantser kind of is our first and most dearest friend. And he can stay that way if used for the parts where he does his best work, like imagining a plot.

So, a pantser writes his stories using the Seat-of-the-pants creative paradigm. A pantser writes fast, without planning much, making it up as he goes along.

A plotter write his stories using the Outline creative paradigm.

A plotter uses outlines to plan and write his story. He works out the kinks before getting himself into the trouble of writing a full draft.

My journey

Looking into my own writing practices, I have used all of the different creative paradigms.

Experimenting on what best fits my writing needs, seems to be my method, and I use them in different parts of the writing process also.

I believe it’s a good thing to respect each project and leave to it to dictate which method would serve him best. There are projects that ask for a quick plotting session and others that are best left to the heat of the moment inspiration.

But, one thing I had been noticing in my writing practice, other than it evolve regardless of should’s and shouldn’ts, is that each project seems to ask from me a different creative approach

As I’ve been working on different lengths and types of stories, I understood that some require a bit more planning from the get going than others. As well as, some ask for more improvisation in order to flush out more creative ideas.

Also, there’s a creative paradigm more fit for a first draft of a story, and another quite different, for a second or third drafts. Why? Some give us more leverage to explore, while others are more suited for working out the things that aren’t good enough.

permission

I had been using all of them, sometimes both pantser and plotter on the same writing project, just in different phases (drafts or composition materials) of it.

But I kind of figured out that, when we start writing, and have a practice for some years, we get to evolve naturally into using more wholesome writing methods. 

We do not have the thrill of the major plot twist. I mean it in a sense of spilling everything onto the page with just that big goal in mind, not delivering on all the other requirements for a good story.

With practice we get to appreciate the composition of the story as a whole. Enjoying it best when we can work out all the details that will help us deliver that plot twist emotion seamlessly.

And it’s kind of easier to draft an entire novel if we have the guidelines previously written out.

Writing an extensive piece of literature is a tiring long run, a marathon, not a sprint. If we have the road clear, and all set up, we can walk it until the finish line, without many path corrections.

But I believe, the important thing to retain in this subject is: we show up to our work, we practice, we experiment, we write stories and we evolve as writers. Then, the creative paradigm will be our own, perfectly suited for our way of writing and being.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References ✍🏼