Last month, I encouraged everyone to start a blog as a way to show fans and friends some of the things you’ve been up to. With a blog, you can tell them anything you want, whether it’s your latest writing adventures, information about your stories and the worlds you’re creating, or even information about writing and publishing. Your blog is an excellent way to share information with people, especially if you like to keep your social networks smaller and more … Read More »

If there’s one tool every writer should have, one place they can send interested readers, it’s a blog. A blog is basically your centralized hub where you send readers from your other social networks. Think of your social media as a wheel — the different networks are the spokes, and your blog is the hub that joins them all. Your blog (which doubles as your writer’s website) is a public journal where you publish posts about things you’re working on, … Read More »

There’s not a lot of gadgetry and technology that goes with writing. Sure, there are dozens of “simple” word processors out there, that all promise to strip out the unnecessary stuff from a word processing program, leaving you with the bare bones functionality. But beyond that, there’s not a lot of apps that we writers can really benefit from. Not when we can pretty much function with a golf pencil and the back of an envelope to get our work … Read More »

As a writer, Twitter is going to be your best friend and your worst enemy. Because it’s the best, most fun waste of time you’re ever going to have. I’ve wiled away many an hour on Twitter, responding to tweets, retweeting clever remarks, or coming up with something funny and thinking, “I’ve got to send this out right now!” all while my deadlines dripped slowly away. But rather than treating Twitter as a den of inequity to be shunned and … Read More »

Writing may be a solitary activity, but we need people in our lives who are just like us to keep us going. People who understand us, and will put up with our quirks and weird behavior. That’s where networking and meeting people come in handy. It’s one thing to bump into friends at a conference, but it’s completely different when you’re at a small local event, or bonding with someone over coffee or lunch. I’ve written in the past about … Read More »

When I was a travel writer for the State of Indiana, one of the marketing principles we preached was “photos get more traffic than text, videos get more traffic than photos.” In other words, visual elements will always attract more readers than a text-only article. I’ve found this to be true myself: if I can include a photo in my article, that photo will appear when I link to the article on Facebook. And if a photo appears, more people … Read More »