Bowing to hard economic times, Clarions East and West1 have joined forces under the auspices of newly appointed director Dave Itzkoff and signed with the SyFy channel to participate in a new reality show called “Clarion Call: “Fight to Write.” Effective immediately, both workshops will be scaled back to three weeks and 15 students each. At the end of every day of shooting, one student will be eliminated. After the first 15 episodes have aired, the survivors of both Clarions will take each other on in a cage match televised live by SyFy and their new affiliate Shyte TV.

This has inspired me.

I’m going to borrow a video camera from my good friend Andrew LeBlanc and shoot a guerrilla-style Clarion West reality show, then upload it here (and by extension YouTube). Though Andy seems to think differently, I kind of believe a “battle to the death” style show starring writers would be boring as hell, but an informative documentary about a bunch of budding writers on the cusp of succeeding might be fun. And, as far as I’m aware, it’s never been done before.

So all you Clarionites, get ready to mug, cause you’re going to be on camera!

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!

In that post, I basically said that it was a waste of time for new writers to keep a blog, and that they should focus on writing fiction instead. Since I’ve stirred up a little controversy, I’d like to elaborate:

Writers are basically small business owners with a product to sell: their words. A blog should really be a sales tool, and I think even beginning writers acknowledge this when they say they blog to “get their name out there”. However, if you’re writing short fiction (or have written an unpublished novel), you are not selling to the public (the people who will be reading your blog), you are selling to editors (who very likely do not read your blog). In any case, a cleverly written blog post will not make them accept a poorly written story. Therefore, writing a great story will sell your work more than writing a better blog. QED.

However, if you DO have a product to sell to the public, as Robert Swartwood pointed out in the comments, now it makes sense to keep a blog. The target audiences are the same. People might read your blog, like your writing, and go out and buy your book. This has been demonstrated time and again by John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, and Charles Stross (of course, it helps that they all wrote terrific books).

So, from a business point of view, new authors should not write blogs and newly-published authors with novels to sell should.

From a personal point of view, as Deven Atkinson and Suanne Warr mentioned in the comments, if you like keeping a diary, by all means put it on the net. Just be honest with yourself about how much it will really impact your career.

I’ve been annoyed for quite some time that I had to have an LJ account to post to any blog on live Journal. If people followed my link, they came to a dead LJ page instead of to WordPress. I’m happy to say that’s no longer a problem.

Head on over to http://jlapp.livejournal.com/ if you’d like to see the result of a cross post. Worth checking out.

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “River of Deceit“ by Mad Season

Welcome to the first in a two-part series on Writing.com. There’s a lot of information to cover on this massive site, so I thought I’d break up the post into one section that details the advantages of using Writing.com’s services, and a second post detailing the negatives. (If you missed the pun in the title, I’ll give you a hint: “Pros” = “Prose”. hahaha…I kill me…).

Writing.com is a massive website that provides a lot of resources for a writer free of charge. It’s a meeting place for new writers and the largest critique group in the world.

Writing.com’s website centers around a writer’s “portfolio”, which is a place for writers to publicly post their work and invite reviews. You can using “Gift Points” to entice other members of the site into giving you reviews of your work (Gift Points are purchased or given as payment by writers you review) . These are certainly not professional quality reviews like you might find on Tangent Online. Usually these are short little shots of encouragement, but sometimes a writer will write you an essay on how to improve your work. Unfortunately, as with any site, Writing.com has their share of trolls, but it’s pretty easy to ignore them.

One of the services that I found most useful was the variety of genre-specific newsletters that get sent to your Writing.com inbox every week. Though these newsletters are often written by amateurs, often they contain valuable tips on how to improve your craft and find markets (much as this website does, but without your charming narrator). Some of the latest newsletter subjects have been “Hero’s Journey – The Belly of the Whale”, “Creating the Perfect Victim”, and “Dealing with Rejection”. There’s a newletter for every genre, including fantasy, mystery, horror, …etc. I’d recommend keeping the number of newsletters you sign up for low, or the reading can get a little intense.

Every newsletter, the editor posts their “picks”, which are often just stories that authors have sent them with a “please put this in your newsletter” note. This is a great way to put your stories in front of a lot of eyes and get some valuable feedback from other readers. Be warned, an “editor’s pick” means nothing, so don’t try to use it as a writing credit or even a good sign about the quality of your story, but it is great exposure.

Other activites include forums to participate in, crossword, games, and contests, so if the two features I mentioned above don’t appeal, don’t write the site off. You can get a base membership to the site for free, so I suggest you check it out.

If you thought this post read like an ad, tune in next post for a scathing critique of Writing.com. It’s sure to be dripping with bile, swimming in sarcasm, and rife with righteous outrage. You don’t want to miss that, do you? Do you? I thought not! See you next post!

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Dirty Frank“ by Pearl Jam

Last week, the Washington Post published an article about Josh Bell, considered by many to be one of the best violinists in the world. They had him busk in a local mall for 45 minutes (total walk-by traffic: 1097 people). He made a grand total of $34.

What does this mean for us writers? Well, the article argues that our perception of an expert’s skill is largely based on hearsay. Get a big enough name and people will believe you are good simply because everyone else believes it. This is one reason why you read deeply flawed stories by big name authors in your favorite magazines, but you never seem to get your babies within spitting distance of Slush Pile A (the other reason is that Big Names Sell Magazines).

Now, before you jump all over me, yes, the pros are good. Many of my favourite authors are pros. But what can you do to up your chances? Get in front of editors as much as possible. If Gordon Van Gelder keeps seeing your name in the slush he’ll begin to remember it. Sooner or later, you’ll start to get personal rejections, then eventually, possibly, an acceptance (*this exact anecdote was told by James C Glass at a panel at NorWesCon).

Building your image is key. That’s why it’s so important to get published in the small presses. Every time you do, your name gets in front of a few more sets of eyes, more people remember you, and your rep gets a little bigger.

It helps if you have a great name like Cat Rambo (It’s a pen name right, Cat? Right? No one’s born with such a cool name, are they?). Pen names are great, but this author likes the idea of seeing his real name on the shelves at Indigo.

What else can you do? Ask Christopher Heath. All of his stories start with “Azieran” (ie. Azieran: Distilling the Essence, in Sails & Sorcery). Azieran is odd enough that you remember it and by proxy you remember Christopher Heath. KD Wentworth does the same thing with her Hallah Iron-Thighs short fiction. A neat trick, and one you should consider if you’re into writing series.

Until next time!

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Money Honey“ by State of Shock

I thought I’d bring your attention to an awesome little website for reviews. Tangent Online is a site devoted to reviewing the short story market. They review everything from independently produced anthologies like this one, to Asimov’s (probably the premier pro magazine out there for fantasy and sci-fi.

What’s really useful here is that Tangent Online also reviews semi-pro zines like DKA Magazine (where this writer got his start) and The Sword Review, both publications where the unpublished author stands a good chance of getting in.

What does this mean for you? One of the things any author thrives on is his/her quote sheet. Garnering (positive) quotes from independent reviewers is even better than getting published and looks great on a cover letter. Tangent Online also lifts the profile of the magazines it reviews, which means that your work is seen by that many more eyes. As far as exposure goes, getting reviewed here is a great start!

A few of the authors I know use Tangent Online to find new markets (check out the market list on the lower left side of Tangent’s home page), specifically to get reviewed. This isn’t a bad strategy. Being listed means that a market is at least semi-legitimate and your work won’t end up stuck at a single-issue magazine.

Another great venue for reviews is Locus Online, but we’ll be taking a look at their site in another blog post. Until then, ciao!