On Blog Writing vs. Book Writing

"Julie & Julia"

As I written before, my writing journey began with the death of my sister due to a domestic violence incident.  After many years of writing, putting down, changing computers from small floppy discs to CDs to current outside storage devices, I published “Act of Redemption" in 2009.

With my non-cheap promotional “package,” a wordpress blog and a separate website was set up for me.  I had no idea how to blog, found the website as uninteresting as everyone else, so I threw both out of cyberspace and started over.  To give credit where it’s due, “The Blog Farm” educated me more on blogging than anyone else in those early days.

Now, two books and over three hundred blog articles later, I’ve found myself being three writers:  1) dark fantasy writer 2) book reviewer 3) blog writer.  I didn’t plan this.  Logically, it makes sense for writers to be readers.  How am I supposed to justify myself as a writer of anything without reading?  And how am I supposed to improve my writing without reading?  Reading is essential to writing.  And besides, I love it.  As I read more, I believe in supporting other new authors, so I post reviews.  I don’t write lengthy reviews because I’m still a novice and am spoiler-weary.  Learning is part of the journey.

My blog writing emerged from advice given to me:  Provide original material for your blog.  So I started writing articles.  Pre-2009 I would’ve never imagined myself having a blog posting regular articles, but now that’s a large part of my writing energy.  For me, it’s energy put to good use because it keeps me writing regularly and interacting with readers.  Books don’t do that.  We write them, publish them, market them, and hope for the best when it comes to sales and reviews.  There’s some interaction, but to me not like with blogging.  In blog writing, it’s a different mindset, challenging in a different way.  Bloggers usually have a general “theme” like reading/writing (my theme), and the posts reflect various aspects of the theme, be it book reviews, hideous publishing experiences, cooking, computer software, or the experience of parenting, just to name a few blog topics out there.

Does book writing “trump” blog writing?  Yes, books are published and have a longer life of readers, so of course it makes sense that writing books are the better long term investment of a writer’s time.  Blogging is “for today.”  But in these days of the ebook revolution, so many books are out there; no new writer knows what their hard work will become.  Blog writing keeps us going by making writers use their minds and skills and be shown to the public almost daily. 

Does every new author need to be a blog writer?  No, since no size of anything fits all and blog writing is time consuming.  Do new authors need to review books?  No, that’s no more a fit for all than blog writing.  Do new authors need to read?  Answer:  Bestselling authors know the answer to that question.