When I decided to self-publish my novel I knew that I would have to set up a website on which I would post blogs.
The basis of any website involves dispensing useful information. We do this through writing blog posts.
Much like fellow classmates in my MFA Program in Creative Writing at Goddard College when facing the annotations we would have to do, I had no idea how I would find the time to consistently write the blog posts while still writing my novels.
Similar to the reaction of fiction authors to writing blogs, many of my fellow students bristled at the thought of having to write annotations for the 12-15 books we would be reading each semester.
Even I, who relished reading the books on my list, struggled at writing and refining my skill at writing these annotations.
And yet the exercise of writing these annotations assisted me in writing and refining the short stories that went into my collection that served as my MFA thesis that I submitted for graduation.
This collection, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, was then taken by a small publisher in Oregon and became my first publication.
On committing to write 4 blog posts each week–a promise I made to myself–I immediately began to think of the annotations I wrote, not so much for ideas, but in a vein of developing passion towards writing them.
To develop and maintain discipline in writing the blog posts for my website, I had to see value in spending my time in doing them. I had to write about something for which I hold immense passion.
Recalling what the director of my MFA program said about the relationship writing fiction and non-fiction I then realized that time spent writing and crafting the blog posts for my website would provide an opportunity to improve my skill at crafting and shaping stories.
Blogging requires passion–passion for your subject, and sharing with others what you know and are learning about that subject.
Your love for the subject bleeds through your words and entices others to join you.
In this way blogging and writing fiction, crafting stories are similar.