The Southampton MFATo Blog or Not to Blog?
A Grad Student’s Question
Should I start a blog? What do I post? How often? What styles and designs do I choose to represent myself and my work? All these answers come with time, but here are ten reasons for why YOU should start a blog:
1) It’s the 21st century – get with the program, people!
2) Build an audience of readers
3) Expose your work to as many viewers as possible (It took 3 years but I have 30 subscribers and 200 page views so far this month!)
4) Connect with other writers and resources
5) Expose your work to meaningful criticism
6) Learn to take and rebuff meaningless criticism
7) Start to adapt to an increasingly Internet-reality-based world
8) You have to promote yourself every way you can to make it in this business
9) You never know what doors you’ll open
10) It’s cool and everyone else is doing it
So if you’re nervous or unsure, but determined to be read, start a blog. You don’t have to devote your life to constantly updating posts and commenting on other writers’ pages, but blogging is just another tool toward accomplishing your goals if you’re serious about your writing career. At least give it a go. It’s not for everyone, but what do you have to lose? They’re easy enough to start. Here are some of the most popular and user-friendly blog sites:
wordpress.com
blogger.com
tumblr.com
You should have included your blog here Joe! As a newbie blogger and MFA grad, I’d also add that picking a topic for your blog can be helpful and direct your readership. I thought about doing a writing blog for a long time but opted for a more journalistic blog style on my other favorite topic: triathlon. Good news is that I’m writing everyday–so that’s a great blog perk! Elizabeth McCourt (www.triathlonobsession.wordpress.com)
Would love to read your blog, can you please respond with a link. Thanks! And as Elizabeth states, it definitely gets you writing – and, of course, a writer writes. Now keeping up with the blog, sometimes that can be a bit challenging – coming up with posts that don’t seem redundant. Great blogging is a craft in and of itself.
Hi all! Luckily my blog should be added on with the contributor sites links soon, but for now you can reach my blog through my profile photo here! My blog was started only after much hesitation. Who the heck wants strangers reading and judging your work? But I realized that was exactly who will read your work if you’re gonna make it. Journalistic blogs are great experience and fun. I find that they are often the most successful, but if you don’t have a specific theme in mind you can always do it like me and use your page to publish and promote your works – you can buy my first book via my blog and I’m publishing a second book by the end of the semester if all goes well! Fingers crossed, well uncrossed, I still have a lot more writing to do!
all blogs must die. you can find mine at http://www.doomage.com ! it should die as well