Wednesday, August 15, 2012

My New Blog Unveiled

In an era where marketing has become the sole responsibility of the budding author, the time is never too soon to begin building a platform.
            So…here I am, answering that call.
            There are multiple reasons I’ve resisted joining the wide world of blogging, the foremost being my preference to hide behind the façade of fiction writing. The irony in this situation is that you'll find more of the true me splashed across the pages of my young adult novels than I care to admit.
            Considering all the soul baring I’ve done in my stories, blogging should be easy—right?
            Yeah, right.
            My biggest problem is that I tend to over think tasks which involve writing. One of the first steps to hit the ground running with your blog is figuring out what you want to write about. Answering this simple question bogged me down for the better part of a year. No blog. No platform building. No moving this crazy dream forward.   
            Why not just blog about writing, you ask? Seems simple enough.
            Because there are already too many writers blogging about writing. Only writers really care about writing and, believe me, the audience is small. Especially when you consider the time restraints placed on most authors. The more minutes sucked up by social media, the less time spent writing. It’s a simple equation.
            I wanted to provide content that’s fresh and will appeal to everyone.
            After attending a workshop on blogging presented by Ali Cross, I finally figured out a theme. Ali made blogging personal when she explained branding. She took me to a dark place in my life, my biggest fear, the reason why I write books, run marathons, do all the crazy stuff I do. My fear of being ordinary. If I run far enough, fast enough, or if I complete NaNoWriMo one more time, I can keep the ordinariness away for another day or two.
            Here we are…at the birth of my blog. My wish is to take the ordinary happenings in life and turn them into the extraordinary, here for your reading pleasure.
            Let’s see how I do.
           
           

11 comments:

  1. Go Chris!!! Looking forward to reading your blog posts! You know, one of my favorite songs is by Sarah McLachlan called "Ordinary Miracle" which was on the movie Charlotte's Web. "When you wake up everyday, please don't throw your dreams away, hold them close to your heart, cuz we are all a part...of the ordinary miracle." The ordinary events of life that happen all around us every day are really amazing miracles that just happen over and over. Sometimes we don't realize how awesome they are. I think the same is true for how we view ourselves sometimes. We forget how miraculous each one of us is in all the ordinariness of life.

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  2. Happy birth-day! Good luck with your blog.

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  3. Good luck with the new blog. Write what's in your heart and don't focus on followers or comments, it will drive you crazy. That's my advice :) Welcome to the world of blogging.

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  4. Hello Christine, I followed Heather over, and I totally agree with her. I'm very new to blogging as well, but I've found I enjoy it. Like you, I really resisted writing about writing. I wanted to write for future readers (historical fantasy). But there's a catch 22: until you have readers, you can't really attract them to your blog (they say you start connecting before you publish, but I've had my doubts).

    So I simply started talking to my online community--my tribe. And they're writers. I also tilt my posts toward my geeky interests (the movie Gladiator, named swords, etc.) and guess what--these geeky topics are getting me the most google searches. So maybe it's true that you begin building the remnants of awareness among your potential right readers by blogging.

    But I honestly try not to worry about it. I consider it writing articles for my friends, with a follow up conversation on the back end. My advice is to stay very relaxed, and let it take it's natural course. Good luck! Have a blast!

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  5. Yay! Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging. You've got a great start and I can't wait to see more. If you ever get stuck on technical issues don't hesitate to give me a buzz.

    Jodi

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  6. Welcome aboard, Christine! I followed Jamie Raintree's FB link. I started blogging about writing, but came to the same conclusion--so many people do it better than I. So now I blogging about personal things that come to my mind. Things with the same flavour as my writing--authentic and honest, hopefully and tad humourous. I signed up to follow you.

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  7. Great beginning, Chris. I guess I don't fear ordinariness so much. It's our ordinariness that connects us. It's fun to see that even famous people are really ordinary because it makes them like us. To me, it's real.

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  8. Love how you write! You are gifted, Christine. Keep up the platform :)

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  9. This is great! I agree completely about being bogged down by writing blogs. I've recently started to steer myself away from blogging only about writing too just because I think I've read everything there is to say about writing. I'm ready to do more and reach more people.

    I look forward to reading more posts in the future!

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  10. Wow what an amazing mission for your blog! I can't wait to see where you go Christine--but with an attitude like yours I know it's gotta be FAR.

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  11. Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging! (It doesn't always have that Disney magic, but a certain appeal all its own.) I hope you get to meet all the wonderful bloggers out there. It's an awesome community!

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