When writers learn I blog, they want to know why "they" should blog and immediately say they don't have the time or they don't want to talk about their writing process or they don't want to release their work onto the internet. They're not thinking of utilizing the blog as a creative marketing tool. They're still in the "writer" mode. There are as many ways to utilize a blog as there are writers. A blog can be many things. A blog can be used in varied ways. But to do so means you have to do a little work and spend some time looking at this whole blogging thing. If you do, you just might find out that a blog is not merely an online diary or a chronicle of one's innermost, darkest secrets, or a transcription of someone's latest writings. Blogs are tools. They are what you make of them. In fact, that's probably what is so exciting about blogs. They're a new frontier waiting for the most intrepid of writerly souls to take that first step and make the most of what they find.
If you're wondering whether a blog might be useful to you in your writing pursuits, two articles, 5 Ways Blogging can help your business and Blogging for Business: 7 Steps for Getting Started, by Jeff Wurwio might prove helpful. I'm not sure why but writers often have a hard time fitting what they do--write--and what they produce--books (short stories, articles, features, etc.)--into a business model. I admit it calls for some mental transformation but in today's publishing world, the writer who is able to switch hats and move from the more artistic model to the business model is better equipped to handle the transformation their work undergoes from a simple manuscript to a published product. I use the word "product" deliberately. We writers don't like to think of our work as product...but it is. At least it is if you have any plans on having your work published and then read.
More and more today's writer assumes the role of a shape-shifter. He or she must move comfortably between the creative, the artist-writer, the editor, the pitch man, the salesman, the agent/representative, the promotor and events planner, the graphic artist and designer, and on and on and on until the the business man or woman emerges, one who not only writes but who is also comfortable marketing, selling, speaking and promoting his or her's artistic creation.
And you thought all you had to do was sit down and write. . . .
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