O.C. Writers

By Kristy Tate // 

Should a writer have a blog? In my opinion, only if you want one. There are more time-efficient and cost-effective methods of marketing, so if you don’t want to, I wouldn’t bother.

That being said, I have a blog. I started it in 2010, about a year before I indie-published my first book. It’s not monetized, so it doesn’t make any money. Although I know bloggers who make a lot of money, I’m not one of them.
I write on my blog sporadically. Every once in a while, I’ll make up a schedule and resolve to write more frequently and regularly, but then I lose my momentum and return to sputtering along.

So why do I have a blog? Because I have stuff to say and my children get tired of listening to me. My dog, arguably, could fill this void, but here’s the thing—it’s like the Golden Rule. You know, do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I’m trying to be the favorite author, the one where you want to read everything she writes—even if it’s only her grocery list.

My blog, my newsletter, and my social media posts all run together like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If I write a blog post, I’ll post it on social media, and I may use it in my newsletter. I write about:

• things that happen to me,
• books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched,
• places I’ve been.

For a while, when my characters were eating in my books, I’d share an excerpt from that scene and a recipe. I called it “Food Fiction.”

On Wednesdays, I share a chapter from my work-in-progress.

Sometimes I might show my spiritual side, because that’s how I roll. I figure that people who are turned off by that aren’t my readers.

I almost never post pictures of my family because I want to respect their privacy. I’ll talk about my friends (in the kindest way, of course) only when I have their permission, or I’ll change their names.

I find it all very interesting. The oddest posts sometimes get the most attention. I wrote a blog post about my friend’s decorating notebook, and it got thousands of page views. (Why? I don’t know.) I made up a checklist on how to clean a condo, and it likewise got a lot of attention. For a while, I had thousands of page views from Russia and comments from people with names like Omar and Boris. (My son told me they were possibly bots, but so what?)

I expect almost nothing from my blog, though I do have links to my books. I don’t have an annoying pop-up box. I don’t ask people to buy my books. It is, in my opinion, just another way for my readers to connect with me, see what I’m working on, and get an insight into my messy, sometimes lackadaisical creative process. (You know, the sort of thing I wish some of my favorite authors would do.)

It’s just like anything else. Remember that saying, the way you do anything is the way you do everything. (Yes, I wrote a blog post on that.) What sort of author do you want to be? How accessible do you want to be to your readers? How much time do you have? What’s your comfort level of sharing? These are all things to consider. There aren’t right or wrong answers. There’s only what is right for you and the sort of author career you want. That’s the beauty of indie publishing, what you do, write, and share, rests entirely on your shoulders. You get to decide how and what you want to carry. And the nice thing is, if you decide to ditch it, you can do that too.

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KRISTY TATE is the Social Media Director for O.C. Writers and a USA Today bestselling author. To date, her newsletter subscriber list is edging toward 15,000. www.KristyTate.com.