A little bubbly and sober thoughts

            As I've often shared with visitors to my blog that we go on frequent hikes in the not quite high country-- meaning we find great views and hikes in the foothills that are within a half hour drive from our home. One of our favs, but one that I have never posted any pictures of is Green Mountain. The name Green Mountain has always been a somewhat ironically named hill as most of the year it is brown- except this year! We had so much rain in May that the tabletop hill just to the west of the city is as green as the much hardier evergreens that color the mountains behind it.

My son and I once saw a baby rattler on the trail here! A little scary!

Walks are a nice time to reflect and this particular day I was reflecting on my writing and on the topic I've been blogging about for the past couple of weeks. 

            I take it from the response (or lack thereof?? Some of you responded! Thank you!!!! ) that some of you might been embarrassed that I was saying it out loud OR I was simply stating the "well duh" of blogging obviousness.But of course if your plan is to  use your blog for your platform building or your advertising base, then I think the question becomes a great big: HOW????  

Maybe you have a plan??? (care to share???)  

A flower's view from the top looking westward

 I mean, I think there are the things we all do which may feel like A Plan: blogfests, the Writer's Platform Building Crusades, etc. where we meet other writers and follow each other, build a support base. And that is fine!! It's good. I am not criticizing them. I believe that bloggers are a community and support for each other is a good thing! The only problem is that it doesn't necessarily reach readers- it reaches other writers (again, not a bad thing...!!!) And as Talie commented on my last post "Building a brand can be hard, I think social networking these days is definitely a good way to start but then to get readers buying - that is the question! ;-)"
      Which is exactly my point! As I have said to you I am a realist (or as close to being a realist as a writer can be-- haha!) and I would like to have readers one day (wouldn't you???). I mean, I will write whether I ever get published or whether I ever have any readers of my work or not, because I simply must.
But my hope is not to have boxes of unread manuscript for my loved ones to send off with my ashes when I die (I mean, how morbid to have all that time and effort  quietly floating in the air above Key West following the gulf stream for who knows how long then finally come to an end as fish food. Sounds fine for my worn out flesh... but my work??).

Our evening is capped off with a bottle of champagne!

 No! I hope for more. So I am looking out over the blogosphere and the World Wide Web-- I mean not EVERYWHERE (and while I am at it, if you want to be thoroughly depressed about your creative endeavors, you can hop over to Michael Offut's blog and read his post on what it's going to take to even get published, click here. It's a reminder too as to why we all keep blogging.) as it doesn't take a thorough search to begin to get some ideas of what may work and what may not. And, as I looked around I spoke to a few other book purchasing friends (in other words: potential customers!!!! Well, not mine, we have different tastes but you get the point. They buy books! They are some of the few!) I got their take on what they thought would draw them to a particular site for a book purchase.

Sunset over the Rocky Mountains

But in the meantime I wanted to analyze my own blogging preferences: I follow 258 blogspot bloggers. That does not include those lovely bloggers who have Wordpress or Tumblr blogs so if it were all totaled up I might follow close to 300 blogs. I do not follow you all as well as I would like. I'm not great at keeping up even with Google Reader's aid but I do try to pop in when I can and there are some I am better at than others because I have developed a connection with the blogger, so to be perfectly frank, I make more of an effort to check on those blogs more frequently (as do you, don't lie!). 

              But then there are blogs I follow because I find them interesting whether or not I have a connection with the blogger and it is those blogs or websites that I am most interested in discussing, because they are also blogs or websites of authors. 

So Bear with! 

A partial view of Denver as we are coming down the hill after sunset. 

One of my very favorite authors is Jeanette Winterson. She is a British author and had a best selling book some years ago called Oranges are not the Only Fruit (loved this book and I highly recommend it to all and I often purchase if for a gift!) but has written MANY books since then which are featured on her site. She has a lovely website which I enjoy but I don't visit it very often. Click here and see what you think of her site. Tell me what you think about it. Would you visit it frequently if you loved her books? 

The second website I would have loved for you to see was for a book called Special Topics in Calamity Physics by New York Times best selling author Marisha Pessl. Unfortunately the website is down so I will just tell you the website is super cool but it is just for the book and tells you nothing about the author at all. There is nothing interactive for visitors at all- no updates on the author... (could this spell trouble for her???)  What do you think about her site being down and no word on a next book or a site for her? 

The third website/blog is maintained by best selling author Jerry Coyne who wrote "Why Evolution is True" (the site is named the same.) I think his site has the most to teach all of us (please don't let content get in your way!), but what do you think? 

Do you know of any blogs or websites that you follow because they are interesting and they simply draw you in? Tell me about them! 

I'd love to hear! 

I know this is a lot of work here but I do think it might just be worth it! 

More to come!!! 

PS If I am breaking my rule about long winded posts, I apologize! I don't know how to break these up anymore and still keep some continuity. I am trying not to be too rambly.  

What's in it for me???

So back from the blog vacation and while I was "gone" I was thinking about the next big post I wanted to write. In the real world I was working a lot. I am on a task force (sounds very formidable and formal doesn't it?) that is putting together a training manual for The Library. It's not finished yet but the biggest part of it is done and is a 250+/- document. My share was much smaller but it took a lot of my energy. So now that we've got the big stuff done, perhaps (perhaps???) blogging can be more like usual. Life when I wasn't working has been full of the usual walks on lovely mountain paths...

At any rate, as I pondered what I would I write and one of the things that I have been thinking about was why do I blog? Why do any of us blog?

So maybe I should just start at the beginning. (This may take more than one post... ) 

In October it will be three years. I began blogging because a teacher friend- Amy Kalinchuk  of Craft e-Revolution said I should blog and join NaBloWriMo. Why would I do that? and what in the world is NaBloWriMo and why would I join? A blog is an online journal she said as she sat in my comfy blue chair and NaBloWriMo is National Blog Writer's Month and a bunch of us all sign up to write on our blog every month. And why would I do that?  Because you're a writer and it's good practice- a place to write every day. 

Blue skies peering down at us through the rock.

At the time, I was working as a middle school librarian with the pay of a paraprofessional. I didn't have a teaching degree or a MLS but I was expected to do all the same tasks the teaching librarians did (learning on the job)... without the pay. In some regards though it was a great job and one of the great things about it was that I had some time to write when the work was all caught up and there wasn't a heavy stream of kids in the library. Kids would trickle in and I would have time to do my own thing whilst supervising the book shoppers (although generally they were just trying to get out of class so I always had to make sure I was keeping an eye out on the time). Blogging seemed an easy way to write what was on my mind without requiring too much solid concentration. 

Mo took this picture a mile or so into our hike. 

NaBloWriMo was quite a challenge but it was fun. I didn't really know the etiquette of blogging, didn't know I should follow people or have any desire to have followers (in fact I kind of dreaded them I think). I wrote on politics and religion and my family and I was always somewhat surprised (perhaps taken aback!) when someone would comment. It wasn't until I met a real blogging (Key West Diary) community that I started seeing how fun a blog could really be! 

You meet people and you have conversations. Perhaps you support one another or you just have fun. Whatever the case, many times you find things in common because you are writing about things that you care about and that others who like what you like are commenting on your blog or commenting on your comment. So, now I found two reason to blog. I was writing and I was making connections (although admittedly there were still not a lot of people stopping by my blog). But as I move on, I think there it's time to process this thing out because blogging takes time and building a community of followers who are really friends takes time. Having gained 182 followers (and I appreciate each and every one of you!!!) takes time! But is it worth it? Is it taking away too much from writing? Or will it have pay off and if so, how? What's blogging doing for me? 

So what about you... What is blogging doing for you?