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I'm off on an overnight writing retreat later today – hurrah!
Before I go, just a quick reminder that you can get any (or indeed
all!) of my new seminar self-study packs at just $9.99 until the end of Friday 27th, when they'll go on sale to the general public at $19.99.
Once you've bought a pack, it's yours for life ... so even if you know you won't be able to use it immediately, feel free to snap it up now before the price
doubles!
The four packs are:
- The Time Management Pack – making time to write,
establishing a solid writing routine, beating procrastination and writers' block and more...
- The Craft of Fiction Pack – writing great dialogue and descriptions, using flashbacks well, structuring and pacing scenes and more...
- The Self-Publishing Pack – getting your manuscript formatted correctly, publishing it on Amazon, crafting a blurb, and more...
- The Freelancing Pack – how freelancing can support the other writing you do, how to get started, finding clients and handling clients (including difficult ones), and more...
Each pack includes four seminars (audio/video, plus nicely edited transcript and a worksheet), and you can find out all the details about them
here:
If you've got any questions, or if you'd like my honest opinion on whether a particular pack is right for you or not, just drop me an email and I'll be glad to help.
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Blogging Worries #2: "I don't feel confident putting myself out there" |
This is the second in a three-part series about common blogging worries.
You can find the previous newsletter, about the fear of technology, in the newsletter archive here:
Today, I wanted to look at another very common worry about
blogging: that it's dangerous or scary to put yourself (and your ideas and your words) "out there" into the world.
Just like the fear of technology that we looked at last week, this isn't a silly or ungrounded fear. As writers, we're often caught between the desire to have people read and enjoy our work ... and the
fear that they'll read it and react in a negative or dismissive way.
When you write a blog, you're putting your words out into the world in a very public form: anyone could come by and read them. You might be particularly worried about the possibility of someone leaving a nasty comment, or sending you an unkind email.
And depending on your circumstances, you might be worrying about specific people (e.g. your ex, your estranged parents) coming across your writing.
Why You Don't Need to Be Afraid to Put Yourself Out There
When you first launch your blog, no-one's reading it but you! You can even set your blog so that search engines won't index it, to begin with, if you don't want the possibility of strangers coming across it.
Remember: - You can control who you share the link to your blog with. Probably, you'll share it with friends/family at first ... and that's absolutely fine. They'll hopefully be kind and supportive readers ... but you have reason to believe that a particular person or group will be less than supportive, don't share your blog
with them!
- You don't have to accept comments on your blog. You can turn off the commenting feature altogether, or you can set it so that you "moderate" comments (you'll be able to read them then approve/reject them; they'll only appear on your blog once you've approved them). Even if you don't moderate comments, you can delete any comment that's been posted on your
blog.
- You can blog under a pseudonym. You don't ever need to use your real name (or a photo of you, etc) if you don't want to.
- Unless you're blogging about very controversial issues, the chance of negative feedback is very small. I've had thousands of lovely comments/emails
over my 10 years in blogging and a tiny handful of negative ones.
You might be worrying that you don't have anything worthwhile to talk about on a blog. That's not true! Even if particular topics or ideas have been covered by lots of bloggers and writers before, you'll bring your voice and
perspective to them ... and you might just reach someone when they truly needed to hear your message.
Don't simply wait in the hopes you'll feel more confident in a week or a month or a year. The best way to overcome your fears about putting yourself out there is to just do it! Even if that feels very daunting at first, it
really will get easier quickly.
Next week, I'll be covering a third big blogging worry: "what if no-one reads my blog and it's all a waste of
time?" |
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What I've Been Reading This Week |
This week, I read "The Yellow Wallpaper" – a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1892, that I've been meaning to read for years but never got around to. If you've read Turn of the Screw, this has a similar atmosphere: a young woman narrator who is experiencing what may be supernatural events ... or what may be symptoms of her increasing mental instability. The Yellow Wallpaper is a
compelling, moving account of post-natal depression (possibly post-partum pychosis), written long before these conditions were recognised and understood by the medical profession. The unnamed narrator is confined, by her doctor husband, to a "nursery" with hideous wallpaper that slowly becomes a growing obsession. It is, rather horrifyingly,
semi-autobiographical: Gilman, who suffered from depression before but particularly after becoming a mother, was advised by her doctor to "Live as domestic a life as possible… And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." It's a very readable classic short story: if you've not read much 19th century literature before, this would be something
accessible to try. You can read it completely free via Project Gutenberg, in various formats, here: |
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