On Blogging for Readers

[scribblemyname]

A/N: So this post got lost in email to self oblivion, but since I just remembered it existed, I hereby post it for your enjoyment. I wrote this on November 18, actually.

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So Catherine Caffeinated talking about blogging because you had something to say, and it got me to prop my metaphorical chin on my metaphorical hands, plunk elbows on the edge of the desk, and think about why I write. Do I write because I have something to say?

I have often thought about what would make a good blog for a fiction writer and finally thrown up my hands in disgust and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea. My nonfiction and fiction interests are separate and apart. Writing is for writers, not readers. But this made me think about: what is it I have to say when I write fiction? A lot, actually.

I said it once before: I write fascinated. I have found that I am interested in the same things that differentiate literature I love from that which I fangirl. I am interested in cost and sacrifice, power and strength, and mastery of oneself. I prefer the twists of complexity, characters who make hard decisions and pay high prices but accomplish their goal. I love order and making logic of chaos and impossibility. Fiction puts my world into perspective: it enables me to see the underlying patterns and constraints grant the freedom to make those hard choices. Selflessness, love, resolve, endurance, the ability to stand persecuted and not defend oneself—these things are power and a power I wish I had.

But how to put that into blog posts? M.C.A. Hogarth does it with meta and does it beautifully, but I have never been able to write meta. It pulls my characters out of their worlds and makes them constructs. They do not exist in my world to talk to me; they are not voices in my head, but people in their worlds. They are flesh and blood and mind and bone and heart and spirit and blood. I have tried meta and cannot do it.

I have written fanfic but that always becomes simply fic. I dislike writing descriptions of their history unless it is answering a question. Most readers do not read endless fic upon fic on a blog if it is not a serial. I'm fascinated by words, but even I am bored by other conlangers posts about the lexical features of their languages. I love the social structures of my worlds, but best when shown in fic.

En brief, I have a lot to say about love and power and strength and romance and angst and tragic choices, terrible sacrifices, and efficient success with terrible consequences, etc., but I say it in fic. I still don't know how to blog it.

But it has me thinking.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem trying to write stuff for my website. I never know what to talk about.

I have a lot of stories, but I find I'd rather let them speak for themselves. And I see the characters as people in their own worlds as well.

I decided it was similar to making a documentary, jumping on board for that ride, seeing it unfold as an outside observer looking in, not interacting or dictating the story, but it comes as it plays out naturally based on the choices the characters make, and while those are based on where they came from and how they grew up and how that shaped them, it's still not something I control. Which used to make me annoyed when people told me to make a fanfic go the way I wanted it to, to take that control, but it wasn't mine to take.

I find the way to answer questions, mine or other people's, is in fic, but that just makes things complicated when people ask me to explain something without it. And I'm terrible with nonfiction.

I don't know... is it even worth writing about writing? The process is different for everyone, but the stories can speak for themselves, and maybe that is enough?

[scribblemyname]

I only write about writing when I want to; it doesn't help fiction readers at all as a rule. Different audiences. But writing for readers? Haven't a clue. I think about it; I mull, but no dice.

The stories do speak for themselves, but I also like to blog and reach my readers, so... Yeah. I still think about this, but so far haven't done anything about it.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to reach readers, either. I don't even think I have any that I don't know personally.

When I try to talk story stuff with people, they don't seem that interested. I don't know what a reader would find interesting, other than maybe more fic. I never go looking at author's websites myself, not even when I was reading more. It just wasn't me.

I'm pretty socially backward, and I think I might even be worse on the Internet than I am in person (which is pretty bad.)

I still find it amazing that I managed to keep any livejournal friends, especially since the only way I seem to relate to people is through writing.

Maybe you could try an open letter type thing. No. That's not right. Hmm.

What do readers really want?

I keep answering something to read.

*sigh*

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

We might have talked about this before, at least in some incarnation. I know a lot of writers who blog about process, and while I think that's fine I don't really find it all that interesting as a continuing topic. I like to know how people write, but once I know it I don't need to hear it again and again.

As far as blogging goes, I'm not sure writers are more or less interesting than everyone else. I tried to set up my wordpress blog as a more "professional" presence, but I don't have a whole lot to say about my own writing process. I do from time to time, but I have to be inspired to write about my writing, as opposed to just writing. I can write meta about fandom characters and I can write backstory about my own characters or about fandom characters, but I really can't separate enough to write meta about my own characters. Why do they do the things they do? Because that's how they are. I don't plan and plot characters enough to begin to tell anyone why they are the way they are.

For my money, I would rather read a well-written story than read about why someone thinks their work is well-written. Or even about why they wrote it the way they did, unless that's integral to understanding the piece on some level.

However, I have a proposal for you as bloggers who are also authors. I would be happy to interview you for your writer's blog as a way of introducing your readers to some things they may not know about you, if you'd be willing to do the same for me. Interested? I'm thinking small, maybe five questions. Maybe that will be inspirational in some way?

[scribblemyname]

I think that is an interesting idea.

I think I've pretty well established at this point that I don't think blogging about writing has anything to do with blogging for readers. That audience is writers. It's more a case of me circling back a few dozen times to what would I say for readers?

When it comes to the things that drive my fiction, I don't know how to turn those things into blog posts that interest me, let alone someone else. :plunks chin on hands: I keep thinking eventually something will come out of percolating this, but I also keep coming up dry.