Once again I am considering changing my writing course. Not changing it, exactly, but trying once again to focus it.

I came back from the Write-To-Publish Conference with too many irons in the fire. I worked on them as best I could, but have not been able to spend the brain power on them to make them into real prospects. I need to lay a couple of these works-in-progress aside.

Then today was a blog parade hosted by WordServe Literary Agency, with many of their clients posting on their platform building efforts. Out of twenty or more blog posts to that many different blogs, only a few dealt exclusively with the writer’s platform, the rest dealing with marketing of books in general. The thoughts I gleaned from the weight of these posts, and from another writer’s blog recommended to me today, were these:

1. A network of family and friends who will champion your work is the first essential.
2. Concentrate on one genre, to maximize marketing efforts as well as for other reasons.
3. Social networking has become quite effective for book marketing.
4. Blog to meet readers needs, not for other writers.
5. Have a blog that targets the audience of your book.

These all seem like truisms to me. Well, except maybe social media. I have limited experience with it, and haven’t been able to satisfy in my own mind that is true. Certainly my initial experience with it says it is not true, but that maybe I have to work at it both harder and smarter.

So I think immediately I’ll exclusively devote my actual writing time to two works, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and the Documenting America brand, which would include The Candy Store Generation as the next installment. To build up a network, I’ve begun casting around for groups to join and participate in. I joined Conservative Arkansas today because, while I tried to take a tone in Documenting America that is not truly conservative, I think conservatives are the most likely audience. I’ve already made one post there and had a couple of people like it.

My blogs certainly have not given me an army of fans who will champion my writing. In fact, with a couple of notable exceptions, my family and friends have proven utterly disinterested in anything I write. Writing acquaintances have shown more interest. So I guess my efforts will have to be targeted to find a new army of friends.

Concerning having a blog targeted toward my work in progress, what I’ve thought of is to open a new blog page under this David A. Todd writer’s blog aimed at the potential audience of Documenting America. I would make posts in support of that work, possibly an excerpt from the book, possibly research toward a second volume, possibly editorials. Anything that would draw in and inform people who might want to buy Documenting America.

Doing this would mean making 3 posts a week in the new blog, which I’m thinking of calling “Citizen and Patriot”, after the passage in the James Otis speech around which chapters 1 and 2 of DA are built. But it would also mean having to cut back on my other two blogs. And finding time to write freelance articles would be impossible, so that would be gone for a while.

So my question to you, loyal readers, is this: Does this sound like a good idea to you? Should I write a blog targeted to US history, focused on original documents, not analysis? I’m anxious to know what you think.