So the blog’s been up for a few days, and I’m starting to get used to the idea that I type it *here* and the entire world reads it *there*, and I’m already starting to ask myself questions like “what in the world will people expect on a site like this?”
I’ve been following other blogs maintained by authors like Neil Gaiman or Marc Gillar. They’re great. Almost discouragingly so. I’m picking up style and content tips, but the question remains: What should I talk about?
Honestly, I’ve never understood the relentless need that some people have to document every little detail of their lives. I’m sure that they have a purpose, but I’ve never been fascinated with anyone enough that posts such as “Well, the cat threw up on me. Again. So I called Mike, my DH, and asked him to pick up some hairball medicine on the way home from work…” can keep me interested. Until now, I've been content to allow the experiences of my life to contribute to my writing, not be my writing, if you know what I mean.
I know that admitting this on a blog site risks censure at best to bodily harm at worst, but it’s true. Of course, it’s a much more fascinating read (for me, anyway) when the “everyday life” so described involves, as it does with Gaiman, things like traveling to China to take part in conferences on Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Looking closer, the reader finds that Gaiman does have his fair share of the more mundane stuff documented as well: birthdays and other personal minutia.
I suppose if I have anything at all useful to say on these here interwebs, it may be in the story of how I, driven purely by desperation, decided to become a writer at the tender age of 34, managed to juggle a full-time job as a Product Manager at an internet company and managed to sell my novel to the first publisher that heard about it (not bragging - I just hear that’s kind of abnormal).
OK, so some of you out there are probably already falling asleep, and this post is running long, but maybe, just maybe, someone else is interested in how I did it and so that’s where my posts for the next few weeks will focus. I’ll say up front that I’d love to say that I stumbled onto some Deep Secret, one that I played to the hilt to my advantage to sell my book, but that would be a lie. Lots of it was nothing more than hard, consistent work… but some of it might have been luck. I don’t know if I agree with that though – I honestly believe in Seneca’s adage: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”, at least most of the time.
I’ll also ask the question: what do you want to know? If you have any questions or suggestions on topics, feel free to belt them out.
Until next time…
