I sent this in response to a post by David Farland called “Nobody Wants to Read Your Blog”. Farland runs an e-mail list which is simply awesome and highly recommended (Comment if you want info on how to subscribe to his list). This is a list of helpful tips for writers looking to draw people to their blogs

Anyways, here it is:

I’ve studied blogs fairly extensively because I create them in my night job as a webdesigner. Here’s a brief list of things that I tell clients.

• Write regularly. Not everyone subscribes to your blog via e-mail or a feedreader. If you publish content, publish it on a specific day of the week (say, Friday). That way people will know when to look for new content. It’s a truism that the more articles you write, the more your blog will get read. All the top blogs (Boing Boing, Whatever, Engaget) post upwards of five times a day. You don’t have to write that much. Aim for once a week, and then gradually aim for more.
  
• Become an authority. Concentrate on a few topics, and become a resource for them. For example, on my blog www.withoutreallytrying.com, I’ve added a page which centralizes all of the important Writers of the Future related articles and resources I could find on the web, and I am doing the same thing for Clarion West. When people search for these topics, I show up on page three of a google search (and climbing).
• Have a hook. A hook is something that will draw people to your site (for me, it’s a win in Writers of the Future, but it could be anything that separates you from the herd). People just don’t want to read about your recent rejections, or even your semi-pro sales–more specifically, it’s not that they don’t want to read about it, it’s just that there’s so many places they can already read about rejection, that they don’t need to go to your blog.
• Become part of a community. Go to well read blogs like Whatever or Jeff Vandermeer’s blog, or even Mamatas’ Nihilistic Kid and make intelligent comments on a regular basis. People will click on your name and follow it back to your site if they like what you have to say on these blogs.
• SEO your blog (and make it look appealing).
  • No ugly colours, and at least one picture with every article.
  • Exchange links with every author friend you know.
  • Make it easy to subscribe to your blog with a “Call to Action” right out front (a subscribe button for instance).
  • Get listed on Technorati and other big directories like DMoz. Make sure Google and Yahoo can find your blog.
  • Enlist a site designer to create a sitemap and add meta tags with keywords you want to target, as well as making sure your blog is pinging the right directories.
  • If you’re on WordPress, you can add widgets that rebroadcast your content to your LiveJournal, Facebook, and even twitter accounts.
  • Set up some Google Alerts (they’re free) on your name, and your blog’s name so that you’ll be notified immediately when someone posts about you, so that you can respond professionally and courteously (that’s key. Flame wars kill reputations and sometimes careers).

Now, it’s important to note that if your blog takes away from your writing time, DON’T BLOG. Always remember that the goal is to have your blog work for you, not the other way around. If you’re not writing, you’re not getting paid. This is the reason I haven’t done an all out push on my own blog. I’m too busy writing a book!

Tags: blogging

So now that I’ve been accepted to Clarion West, I thought I’d post my application essay. I’m in, so something must have grabbed the judges’ attention.

Clarion West Application Essay (2009)

Here’s a little bit about me: four years ago, I was writing a novel with elves and dragons and a Mary Sue character as the lead. A friend of mine told me that it felt like a mixture of every fantasy novel I’d ever read. So I scrapped the novel and started writing short fiction. I’ve had to reinvent myself several times since then, and I hope to do the same at Clarion West.

I’ve had a few successes so far. I sold a story to Fantasist Enterprises–a small press anthology paying pro-rates. Recently, it was announced that I won Writers of the Future, and I look forward to attending the workshop. However, I’ve yet to sell to any of the pro magazine markets. At this point, I feel like I have the basics under control, but my writing is uneven. I’ve been studying Best-Of anthologies, reading broadly, and buying the pro-zines I’m subbing to. I’ve also been following the career of Clarion West grad, David D. Levine. He’s a great writer, and he speaks glowingly of his time at the workshop. I hope to accomplish many of the same things at Clarion West that he did.

I feel like I need to sharpen my writing. I know this because the members of my writing group are excellent writers. Every single week, I can see that I have things to learn. I am in study-mode. The WotF win has done nothing to change this. At this particular moment, I’m working on adding more voice to my dialogue, but in the past I’ve really focused on line-by-line prose, and how to generate more original ideas.

To this end, I’ve hunted out markets that provide personal feedback. I used to write stories that Clarkesworld might pick up because then-editor Nick Mamatas sent a mini-critique on each submission. They started out “scathing” and eventually went to “reluctant respect”. Unfortunately, he moved on before I could make “gushing praise”, but I still have hopes of gracing the magazine’s e-pages. Still, when he moved on and the personal feedback dried up, Clarkesworld dropped from Target Number One to Target Number Somewhere Below That. I’ve since discovered Baen’s Universe, which also gives personal feedback through their Slush Forums. My first submission there was pretty much panned, but I was able to take the criticisms I received and rewrite that story so that it might actually stand a chance. Finally, I recently joined the Codex Writers’ Group and have been benefiting from their critiques.

In an effort to improve my own writing, and also to give back to the short fiction community, I, with the help of Camille Gooderham Campbell and Steven Smethurst, founded Every Day Fiction. EDF is a flash fiction magazine with about 2000 readers which publishes a new story every day. Being the Managing Editor has given me the opportunity to discover what works and what doesn’t in the writing of others. EDF commits itself to responding personally to every single submission–an act only possible because of a sophisticated administrative back-end written by our talented webmaster. Because I need to respond to writers with a mini-critique of their stories, I have learned how to word them diplomatically, and also how to highlight the positive while I cite the negative. In response to requests by writers, I also founded an EDF writing group, whose members have been published in various semi-pro magazines.

In addition to being active in EDF’s forums, I also frequent other writing hangouts like SFReader, Writers of the Future, and Codex. I read a score of writing blogs, including Whatever, SFWA Members’ News, Writers of the Future, and many others.

I know that Clarion is right for me because I am still discovering things to improve about my writing. I’m not just learning how to fix one story, but actually finding weaknesses in my writing overall. For instance, in the Baen’s story mentioned above, the main criticism was that the start of the piece was slow and a little confusing. Not only was this crit dead on, but I went back and took a look at every story I have out there and it turns out that several of them had beginnings that were slow or confusing.

The opportunity to learn not just from the instructors but from eighteen other students at similar points in their careers, and to form a support network that will last for much of my professional life, would be fabulous. I hope that you will consider me for participation in Clarion West.

Tags: Clarion West, Codex Writer's Group

Got the call today that I’ve been accepted to Clarion West for the class of 2009. I’m incredibly pleased by this. I’d actually applied to both Clarion and Clarion West, but CW was a clear favourite because it’s got awesome instructors, a vibrant writing community in Seattle, and is a short three hour drive across the border. I’m going to arrange for a PACE pass so that I can skip the line-ups there and back.

I’ll be posting my Clarion West Application Essay, so you guys can see what got me in (of course, the fact that the story I submitted with my entry placed 1st in Writers of the Future couldn’t have hurt    ).

Tags: Clarion West

In my position as Managing Editor of Every Day Fiction I have to make daily decisions on who we publish and who we don’t. This is a pretty major thing considering that authors who publish with us get read by, at last count, 1500 people–a number that is unheard of outside of the professional level magazines. Oh, and last year, we nominated six authors for the Pushcart Prize.

Sometimes you meet an author who’s on the verge of breaking out. One such author is Brian Dolton. He’s subbed a bunch of work to us recently, and I’ve accepted every one… but every time I see a new submission I want to reject it. Why? Cause I worry he’ll stop submitting unless it’s a challenge. It’s my fear that if I don’t occasionally reject stories, authors will think that they’re better than us and move on. Now, Brian is a humble, courteous author, and a writer that I admire… and as long as he keeps subbing great stories we’ll keep publishing them.

But I can’t help wanting to reject his work every time I read one of his stories. Brian, if you read this, consider that a challenge!

Tags: Brian Dolton, Every Day Fiction

I’m very happy to report that a writing buddy of mine, Nicholas Ozment, has had a collection picked up by Cyberwizard Productions.

Says Nick:

The stories of Smoke the Dragon, which I have been working on (off and on) for the past nine years, have found a publisher and a home. This summer the collected stories will be published by Cyberwizard Productions in book form, under the title Knight Terrors: The (Mis)adventures of Smoke the Dragon.

In the meantime, starting February 1 each chapter will appear online at Abandoned Towers Magazine.

I have a brief introduction up now, sharing a bit about where the idea for Smoke came from. If you have a chance, please pop over there, check out the intro, and leave a comment, would you? The publisher really wants to generate some buzz for the book online before it comes out in print, so more comments shows more interest!

Here is the link: http://knighterrors.blogspot.com

Nick is the author of “The Only Difference Between Men and Boys“, which if you remember, got an astonishing 32,000 reads. He’s also one of the editors over at EDF’s sister publication Every Day Poets, a rising magazine in poetry circles.

I, for one cannot wait for this collection. Nick has a unique and humourous voice. You can read the fiction he’s published at EDF here. Believe me, you won’t regret it.

Tags: Collections, Cyberwizard Productions, Friends, Knight Terrors, Nicholas Ozment, Smoke