OK, here we go. I had a blog and virtually no one read it. Yet I spent so much time wordsmithing it, revising it, and then reading it over and over–making edits even after it was published. Recently, I signed up for a webinar called “Author on the Internet” with uber-agent Carly Watters of PS Literary Agency. I admit to being a fan girl because her advice seems so focused and relevant. And she knows her stuff. Follow her on Instagram. And she is part of a fantastic podcast for emerging writers, “The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.”
Among the takeaways from that evening was the notion that blogs are old school. It takes too many clicks to get to the post from Instagram or Twitter or Threads or whereever. I took that revelation and ran with it, eager to shed the old blog.
But I am also in the throes of revising an 88,000-word manuscript and entering the second year of the MFA program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Having a draft is no guarantee that “The Salt and Light Express” will ever see the light of day, but if it weren’t for the program I would have no draft to revise. So I thought it would be helpful to myself and maybe to others to jot down my aha moments and frustrations in real time. One “aha” is the realization that blogs are not an effective way for a writer to get the word out about their work.
Another “aha” that I will spend more time on is the recognition that we have to sell ourselves, which is why I created this website. Yes, it is very premature; I am months away from querying, but I actually like to create websites. So here we are.
I promised I would only do a few paragraphs at a time, so back to revision. More on that later.
