It’s December 30 again. That means a quick look at the past year in my Blue Night blog: why I have it, why it’s useful to me, what I hope it adds more than it takes away from the internet.
Fifteen years ago when I first flirted with the idea of a blog, I was afraid I’d never be able to create enough art and writing content for it to be worth the time. I’d done well at essays-on-command in college, and kept a desultory journal up into my thirties. But those were not public blog posts, accessible to anyone with a web connection.
Then I found book arts, and rediscovered digital art. I found online communities that I loved and valued. Some decent art sales increased my confidence in my writing, which led to publication, and some other minor validations.
Turns out, I’m a blabbermouth online: the content on this blog, over 11,000 posts over at AbsoluteWrite in the four-and-a-half years since I joined, 39 fanfiction stories and associated comments posted over on Archive of Our Own, plus all the private forums I belong to…that’s a lot of words and images.
Why blog any of them?
The positives: Writing on topics and themes keeps me able to research, frame concepts, and write without freezing up too much in writer’s block. It’s great skills-training for both fiction and non-fiction writing.
I showcase my own art here as blog headers – when I haven’t cited art from somewhere else. So a piece like ‘Pear Espalier’ above, which I made as a woodburning project on a bamboo tray for a charity raffle prize, can become another piece of art in my online portfolio.
The Blue Night blog is good reinforcement for when I do get creatively blocked. There’s no real pressure with these blog posts. I update when I feel like it and when I have something to say. Writing a blog post can unstick my brain, and let me swing faster into writing ‘the real stuff’.
It’s good advertising. Yes, agents, editors, and other authors do visit this site. They can see how and what I write, in a relaxed-if-slightly-snarky setting.
It’s my calling-card and clearinghouse. The blog is a mishmash of writing, art, essays, and links, because I don’t yet see any reason to separate all my different pen-names and areas of interest. Just to recap: here, I’m Crane Hana, and that may or may not be my mainstream fantasy pen-name. In the past, for tiny anthologies, I’ve been M.H. Crane. For Loose Id, I write as MC Hana. In the art world, I am Marian Crane. On AbsoluteWrite, Archive of Our Own, and some other online forums, I am Filigree.
The negatives: blogging can be a time-sucking black hole, and an easy ‘fix’ when I should be writing more-lucrative work. The blog costs money to run and host. It doesn’t draw enough views to be tempting to any major advertisers. Nor am I certain that it should become an advertising partner.
In my darkest moments, I concede that Blue Night probably doesn’t add all that much to the sea of human knowledge. But since the first hominid scratched patterns into seashells, or painted a handprint on a cave wall, we have all been trying to make our mark on this world. These are some of my marks, far more ephemeral, but just as hopeful and defiant.
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Stats and things:
In 2014, I added blogroll links, rearranged my author pages, and added post categories. I changed the original header art to something a little more eye-catching, but just as relevant to my writing.
I’m making my WordPress 2014 status report public, because it says some interesting things about my mostly accidental self-promotion on a blog that never sees more than 133 viewers a day. Maybe this will help other writers who are too nervous about active promotion.
http://jetpack.me/annual-report/47746770/2014/
While most of my viewers hail from the United States, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, I’ve had many views from all over the world. Granted, certain countries-of-origin just scream ‘clickfarm!’ but that’s a cost of open blogging.
I was correct about indirectly monetizing fan fiction. Two blog posts written in 2013, linked to specific fan fiction stories hosted over on Archive of Our Own, drew an incredible amount of traffic to this blog in 2014. Even better, they resulted in a relatively-significant number of clickthroughs to my Amazon page and other vendors. From that, I can infer that people browsed the fan stories, followed the link to this blog, then looked at my commercially-published original fiction. Some of them even bought it! I think I have a better ROR on fan fiction than many similar authors do on paid advertising. Passive advertising like this is far more efficient than dozens of ‘Buy My Book’ tweets, and it’s a more palatable way to use social media.
For all the folks who seem to hate AbsoluteWrite, the big online writing forum has been very useful for me: as a social gathering spot, as a perpetual workshop to help me hone my skills, and as a funnel for interested viewers of my blog. In 2014 the most visits to Blue Night came from AW portals. Thank you, fellow AWers!
My overviews are appreciated. Several of my writing-industry posts drew more hits than I ever expected, and some very worthwhile exchanges. I’m happy that other people liked my viewpoint enough to spend time not only reading it, but commenting.
What’s in store for 2015?
I’ll have the site redone – or likely make a more-professional, narrow-focused spinoff – should my commercial writing break out into bigger markets.
I’m participating in a month-long blog hop starting on January 1, about writers’ paths to publication. I’ll have some more free fiction online soon, as well as (hopefully!) links to more commercially-published fiction. I’ll be hosting more book reviews and interviews with other authors in the M/M and Science Fiction & Fantasy romance field.
I’m looking into hosting sites to ‘park’ this blog in perpetuity, just in case. I’m not thirty anymore, and life has a tendency to throw spanners in the works just when we’re all steaming happily along.
Thanks to all my readers for helping make 2014 a better year for me. (Even you, clickfarmers; your attempts at comment spam still make me laugh. Keep ’em coming, I’m still harvesting the better ones for book art.)