Adventures in blogging
I’m not much of a blogger. I’ve come into this in a back handed way. My first effort was to publish one of my novels one chapter at a time with the idea that it would go viral and result in a real publishing deal. I put out one chapter and when there was no demand to continue posting chapters I gave this up.
When years later I decided to try blogging again, I discovered the blog site pattynicnac had already been claimed. How dare they! I had forgotten about my earlier attempt. The person who had stolen my blog site was an earlier version of me.
So then, preachingthepsalms.blogspot was born. I had started a preaching series on the Psalms and thought I would share this on-line with the thought there might be other ministers who might want to try this as well and would benefit from my musings much as I had benefitted from sermons and sermon suggestions at other web-sites. I was already doing the work of writing the sermon. It wouldn’t take much effort to put them on-line, I thought.
This came to an abrupt halt when my position as chaplain was eliminated, taking with it my need to come up with weekly sermons. Time to revise and revisit what I was doing on this blog.
In the meantime, a helpful post by Meghan Ward, Networking for Introverts: 10 Blogging Tips for Authors, let me know I had been doing everything wrong. “Don’t bore people by posting long chapters of your work.” Don’t post on your blog anything you want to have published as publishers will consider it already published. Keep your posts short and engage your reader. So much for my novel and sermons. Fortunately, very few logged on to read my posts so I figured little harm had been done.
So here I am, learning from my mistakes. Is there any other way to learn? If there is please tell me. I must be the wisest of women for I have made enough mistakes.
I’m trying it again. Maybe this time I’ll get it right.
Oh, and always leave your reader with a thought provoking question to engage them in your blog.
What have you learned from your mistakes?
Copyright Robertson May 2013
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