NO ONE VISITS; NO ONE CARES_Insecure Writers Support

What we write and 

what others see 

when reading our words

are often two different things.

No one visits your blog?  

No one cares?

Why should they?  What is in your blog post for them?

The same goes for your book.  What does it do for the reader?

Are your posts all about your new book?  

{By the way, did you notice mine in my sidebar?}   

Sorry, I couldn't resist.  But you and I should resist.

The ghost of Will Rogers just reminded me 

that our horns sound much louder 

when someone else is tooting them!

Are your posts mainly advertisements for others' books?  

People shy away from those posts, too.  

They want to read how to make THEIR books sell.


I am reluctant to ask others to have me on their blogs to talk about my books 

since I know their visitor count drops when I do.

So how to get our books noticed?

The ghost of Mark Twain just ambled by with his daughter, Susy 

(you can see the both of them in THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT)

OUCH!  

Mark swatted me, saying I had hawked one of my dang books again!

Anyway his ghost reminded me that writing is easy -- 

all you have to do is cross out the wrong words and replace them with the right ones.


This time Susy swatted him.  


At her stomping foot insistence he grudgingly gave up one of his keys to writing well:  

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what most of us are unable to say."

Have you read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?

(A surprising sequel will be published this July -- "Go Set A Watchman.")

Here are some extracts from her prize winning book:

"Maycomb, a one-taxi village, where a day is 24 hours long but seems longer.  No one hurries here, for there is nowhere to go."

"Ladies here bathed before noon, after their 3 O' Clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

Scout's older brother Jem and good friend Dill see the white southern world for what it is: a world of hypocrisy, 

a world burdened with old racist attitudes which have nothing to do with humanity. 

Jem says, "I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like." 

Dill decides he will be a new kind of clown. "I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.... Every one of `em oughta be ridin' broomsticks."

"No matter how you try to divide up the Human Race, there's really just one kind of folks.  Folks."

Writing like that will generate Word of Mouth 

because they evoke images and realities in words that sing to our psyches.


{Sadly in Oct 17, 2013, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was re-banned in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.}


Susy just swatted her father again when he cackled, 

"And the next day, every dang copy of it in the whole durn parish was bought and read for all the juicy forbidden parts!"

Mark is right: 

if we can just manage for our books to be banned, we will shoot up the bestseller lists.  

But in today's society, what could we write so base as to be banned?

So how to write a bestseller?

1.) DON'T WRITE A BOOK -- 
TELL A STORY.

      As in "A woman shot the clerk in front of me and ran away."  

      VERSUS

      "What's wrong with me?  I'll tell you what's wrong!  

A smelly old woman shot the clerk right in front of me.  She ran out of the store, but before she did, she spun around and sobbed out one word.  

God.  That word.  I had to have misheard.  I had to!  What was it?  I won't ... I can't tell you.  I - I need a drink."


2.) MAKE IT AN EXPERIENCE

     As with the above example, try to put the kind of detail in stories that will make people experience what the characters are experiencing.


3.) MAKE THE CHAPTERS SHORT

      An estimated one out of every 17 hardcover novels purchased in the United States belongs to James Patterson, the poster boy of short chapters.

     Short chapters keep people reading.  

They are not the kind of chapters I like to read -- 

I always feel as if the author were trying to make me ADD.


4.) PLANT THE HOOK EARLY

     I try to pretend that there's somebody across from me and I'm telling them a story 

and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished. 

John Grisham always plants a really powerful hook early:

 that question that makes you want to know what the hell is gonna happen to this man or this woman. 

I hope this helps in some small way.