Blogging for Writers – Ruth Livingstone

Guest blogs. Are they worth doing?

What I’ve learnt from writing guest posts for other people.

This year I’ve written three guest blogs, and contributed a small section to a fourth one. I thought it would be useful to reflect on the process and consider what value, if any, came from writing these pieces. The posts were all based on my coastal walking adventures, but covered a number of different topics:

Wales: as seen through the eyes of a “foreigner”.
Solo walking: why more women don’t do it, and why they should.
Challenges: setting your own.
Footpaths: their importance and why I value them.

Continue reading “Guest blogs. Are they worth doing?”

How to write an effective blog post

In this post, I’m going to share the single most important method you can use to write an effective blog post. And, don’t worry, it’s easy to remember and quick to apply.

It involves a simple say-it-three-times structure. Continue reading “How to write an effective blog post”

Why every writer should be a blogger too

Why every writer should be a blogger too. The Virtuous Cycle and other benefits.

If you are serious about writing, you should be blogging too.

First of all, blogging forces you to WRITE and allows you to publish your own writing instantly, The immediacy of the work and reward system create a virtuous cycle.

Virtuous Cycle: You write a blog post. You publish it. People read it. You feel great because people have read your work. You write another blog post… etc. Continue reading “Why every writer should be a blogger too”

How blogging improved my writing.

You never know what will happen when you start publishing your thoughts to the world. Some of the unexpected outcomes are…

Blogging is a strange art.

It’s a form of self-publishing, but without the extensive editing and revision that most authors inflict on their self-published prose.

As a result, the content and quality of blog posts can be scrappy and variable. Poor grammar, dodgy spelling and clunky structure are commonplace. And, all too often, blog posts are prime examples of unrestrained egotism, being supremely uninteresting to everyone except the blogger themselves; acting more like personal diaries than public publications.

And yet, blog posts can be riveting, giving insights into topics you would not otherwise consider, and presenting intriguing snapshots of other people’s lives. The instant aspect of publishing a post also gives blogs an immediacy, a vibrancy, and a topical relevance that makes blogging more like journalism than other forms of writing. Continue reading “How blogging improved my writing.”

Writers Conference 2014: Working as a writer in the digital age.

It’s not easy for a writer to make money from the web, partly because of the expectation that everything on the Internet is free. And partly because the web is full of great content and it is very hard to stand out among all the digital noise. But the panelists had some suggestions we might consider…

I am a hopeless gadget-junkie. In 1985, I bought one of the first home computers (a BBC Micro) and taught myself how to program in BASIC. Then along came PCs and, in 1995, access to the Internet via a fragile telephone link into the MSN network. Soon I became tangled in the limitless possibilities of the World Wide Web and taught myself HTML so that I could put together web pages.

I always believed that the web and its hyperlinks would open up a whole new way to create and read fiction, I was just not quite sure how to do it.

And I’m still unsure.

So, I was looking forward to the “Working as a Writer in the Digital Age” panel session. Continue reading “Writers Conference 2014: Working as a writer in the digital age.”