Dean Wesley Smith has been a writer for over thirty years. He has written a large number of short stories, some novels, and was a writers of Star Wars novels. His wife is also a respected writer.
Smith has a blog in which he gives advice to us in the writing trenches, trying to figure out how to break in. He’s a fan of self-publishing, but does not say you should never pursue trade publishing. He tends to realize that everyone’s circumstance is different, and both publishing directions are valid pursuits.
In a recent blog post about promoting our publications, he had this to say.
DO NOT blog about writing or your writing process. No real book buyer cares. If you must blog, write about the content of your books. If you are doing books with cooking, blog about cooking. And so on. Otherwise, don’t blog. Again a huge waste of time.
So, what he’s saying is that this blog of mine is a waste of my time. Because I have made this blog about my writing process. What am I thinking about writing next? How’s my work-in-progress going? How my sales of published works? My thought was that at some point I would have hoards of adoring fans who would want to know all about that. Well, maybe not hoards, but some number who would be interested.
According to Smith, no one is interested in that information. They might be interested in my books and stories, but not in me. Deflating to think about, but probably true. Probably all of these posts about my writing work, decision-making, and progress is not winning me any readers.
I will think about this. What is or are the right topic(s) to blog about? If it should be about the topic of my books, I have a dilemma in that my topics are scattered across several subjects. I would need multiple blogs to cover them. But Kristen Lamb says don’t have multiple blog. Have one blog and cover all your topics in that. I don’t know, but it seems that a post about the current World Series would not appeal to the same people as one about early church history.
Of course, that confirms the advice of other writing pros: Don’t write across genres, because those who read one won’t read another and you won’t have readers reading all your books. Or, stated another way, you will have to develop a separate audience for each new genre or major topic.
Alas, the course I’ve taken. Will it kill me from work and worry?
I face much the same dilemma as you, and I do think about it every now and then (although not in such an organized way as you have!). I have one blog, and I don’t write much about writing — because, as you’ve said, it just doesn’t seem to me that most people would care. I should say that I DO enjoy reading about the writing process as you describe it. And I do often post on something related to one of my books (which are also quite varied in theme) — for instance, I might post about a Wagner opera that Ludwig II enjoyed. Then I’d of course link to my book on the topic. I figure, over the years, when people search for such a topic, they’ll come across my blog and possibly my book. It’s sure a lot of work to promote books, huh?
Well, if Ludwig liked Wagner’s music then I guess he was crazy.