Blog Class

YAY!! I'm so excited that yesterday was the first day of my Bogging 101 class. I have been researching the topic like crazy over the past several weeks, researching myself down a little blogging rabbit hole of sorts.

I think I really just need an organized way to think about blogging and this should help. I will be researching the basics of blogging and notice that the writer already assumes I have followers. WRONG! So then I research how to increase traffic to your blog.

When researching how to increase traffic, all this talk about RSS feed was popping up, so I had to research what exactly RSS feed was and how I should use it. Then, of course, I got sucked into a tornado of all the cool widgets offered for blogs. After I spent some time pimping out my blog, I was ready to start back where I left off. Which was where again? Oh yeah, generating traffic.

One of the major things you're supposed to do is be present to other relevant bloggers. Many new bloggers will leave relevant comments and links on blogs in the hopes of getting a link back from the big blogger to their small blog (sending all their traffic to you!). So I then have to read a few blogs to find something that I can give valid input to, I don't just want to go throwing my name on something meaningless.

So I end up getting in to writing a Flash Fiction of about 1,000 words. Now this flash fiction was a subgenre smash and took quite a bit of research for me to understand what my two subgenres were (Weird West and Haunted House). 

Then I think, I wonder if I could sell this flash fiction? And I get into another downward spiral of researching how to find magazines that buy these sorts of stories. How much do they pay? What's the submission etiquette? PLEASE HELP! I'M STUCK IN THIS HOLE!

And on, and on, and on...

So I'm really hoping that this course will not only teach me enough about blogging to really get me going, but I'm also hoping it will organize the little ambitious gremlins in my head that just want to know more NOW!

The first course is already calming my nerves, asking me questions about my blog that I should have asked months ago. I have been struggling with what to write about. I think I can attribute this to not really knowing who my desired audience was.

I have two desired audiences (I think). I really want to blog about my journey to becoming a writer, sharing what I've learned, both the easy and hard way, and also what I learn about blogging on the way. Then I have the real purpose of my blog, to establish a platform of potential readers. But the novel I'm writing is YA. I don't really want to blog about the interests of typical teens. I wasn't a typical teen, whatever I have to say would come off as forced, I think.

So, I'm really just hoping that my scatter-brained posts will resonate with someone, somewhere and we can get this show on the road!