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3 Reasons For Authors to Start Blogging, and 3 Ways to Do It Right

February 17, 2020 in Writing for Life with 0 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Brandon Cornett.

Are you a writer trying to reach more readers? Do you want to increase your exposure among your target audience? If so, you could benefit from starting your own blog. And if you currently have a blog but haven’t put much effort into it, now is the time to begin.

I speak from experience. As a veteran freelance writer, I’ve used blogging to help my clients grow their websites and businesses. And as a fiction writer, I employ those same skills to bring readers to my own site, to support my publishing goals. In this article, I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learned through fifteen years of blogging.

Three Good Reasons to Start Blogging

Almost any writer of fiction or nonfiction can benefit from publishing a blog. It allows you to promote your work and grow your audience by doing something you love—writing. With that in mind, here are three more reasons to start blogging.

You already have the necessary skills.

As a writer, you already have the most important skill needed to launch a blogging program—you know how to write. You know how to introduce ideas, develop them, and support them with information. Those are the primary skills needed to launch and maintain a blogging program, and you’ve got them in spades. Continue Reading…

How to Put Passion into Your Writing

February 10, 2020 in Writing for Life with 1 Comment

I’m reprinting a post I wrote years ago because, well, it bears repeating!

When you read a novel and you sense the passion behind the story, what does that look like? Do you ever start reading a book and feel it’s flat and formulaic, like the writer wrote it in his sleep? At very least, you can’t imagined he cared much for his story, or stayed up late nights writing because of the excitement coursing through his veins.

I often quote a particular line from a movie (I think it was Rich and Famous, so if you know the source and I’m wrong, please enlighten me!) that has stuck with me through my decades of novel writing: “If your writing doesn’t keep you up nights, it won’t keep anyone else up either.”

I think the highest compliments a writer can get (and the ones I love the most regarding my own novels) are when readers remark that they stayed up all night reading the writer’s novel, unable to put it down.

That’s not implying your writing should be keeping you up because you just can’t make it work or you are stuck or it’s just plain terrible. What I feel that line means is the writer is so passionate about the story he is telling that he can’t stop thinking about it, and he can’t sleep because he just has to put on the page all the wondrous words that are aching to get out. Or something like that. Continue Reading…

How To Figure Out What To Write

February 3, 2020 in Writing for Life with 2 Comments

Today’s guest blog post is by Brian Berni.

Around this time of year is when we writers are most excited about and motivated to go after our writing goals. It’s a New Year, a “clean slate” from the previous year, and that gives us an opportunity to do things differently.

If you’ve been procrastinating about your writing goals, or if you aren’t being consistent with your writing projects, I’m going to challenge you to really think about whether these are things you want to continue working on this year.

An easy trap that writers fall into is writing something just because other writers are doing it or defaulting to writing a novel because “that’s what writers do.”

I say you should write whatever you’re actually motivated to write. It will be different for everyone—what motivates one writer would cause another writer to procrastinate.

But if you are going to ditch your previous writing goal or project (or one you are just getting started writing), you may be wondering, “What do I write now?” Continue Reading…