little white truths

Please note: this post is not intended to be a comprehensive step-by-step guide to starting a blog. Many decent guides exist in cyberspace and I'm no expert so I can't add anything essential to the information available. 

What I can add, however, is my experience thus far. Hopefully you'll find something encouraging in there, or at least have a chuckle or two - a moment of recognition. That'd be good.

Warning: I may rant a bit. I haven't decided what I'm going to say yet but I'm feeling that tight feeling in my belly, the one I get when someone cuts me off while driving. You know the one.

Yep, I needed to do that. I blo*dy hate technology and I'm rubbish at it, but my two blogs are now part of my writing presence and I've needed to swallow all resistance and return to blogging with an open mind. I first did this when I created my author website and Facebook author page, but I didn't do it well enough. Like any worthy cause, I reckon you have to fail at least once before you succeed.

If you're as rubbish at this stuff as I am, get ready to fail a lot.

If you're going to blog, you realise that people might actually read your stuff and know your name/face, yes? ARGH. If you're as intensely private as I am, this will present a major stumbling block. There are ways to hide your identity online of course, but not for all of us. I'm a writer and I need to put my name to things if I want to earn a living from writing. This means that, when I give dodgy opinions or make mistakes - PEOPLE WILL KNOW IT WAS ME.

At this point you can either run for the hills or just prepare yourself. Remember also that people generally prefer blogs (and other writing) to feel personal, so they'd like to know something about you and feel they can interact with you. Social media is interaction. It is public. Deal with it. Occasional freak outs over this are completely natural and completely fine (that's what I tell myself anyway).

Can an old dog learn new tricks? Geez I dunno. What I do know is that I've had to work out how to do things I never dreamed of doing. Like inserting code. I did ask my husband before doing this (petrified that fiddling with code might cause some kind of explosion and ruin my blogs forever - a very reasonable fear, I must say), considering he's good with technology. His response was this: 'I've no idea how to do that. That's programming.'

PROGRAMMING, I TELL YOU.

My golly. I managed to do it, in the end - after bucket-loads of the proverbial sweat and tears, and enough coffee to kill a small-to-medium-sized horse. I also somehow managed to do such things as submit sitemaps, use webmaster tools and have my site crawled for errors and such. I've also had to get used to seeing words like 'robots' (I still don't know what those are of course, but I now know they exist). The mind boggles.

I'm sure you've heard this before: blogging takes time. Just how much of your time it will take depends on many factors, including why you're blogging (for fun or for a work-related purpose?), how difficult you find computer stuff and how much time you have to spare.

I started this particular blog because I unexpectedly had some time on my hands after my work hours were reduced. I'm telling you, I'm working more hours now. It's nice to have a distraction (particularly for those of us who have trouble sitting still), but this has gone so far above and beyond that, I can't even see 'that' anymore. 

My hope is, once I've sorted out all the adminny-type stuff (like PROGRAMMING and ROBOTS), I'll be able to focus more on the thing I'm actually doing this for: writing (I'm certainly not doing it for ROBOTS).

I've always hated asking for help. I'm supposed to be a magical human being who's an instant expert at everything. Turns out I'm not, though I'm still in denial about that.

If you start a blog and want it to get somewhere (wherever that may be), you're going to have to research and read tips and how to's and the like. You may also have to post dumba*se questions on live forums and such in order to work through any issues. Yes, this means exposing yourself as a baboon. 

It's always possible to pay for help, if you have disposable income. Unfortunately I do not - or rather, any disposable income I do have is earmarked for dinners out and I'm not prepared to trade those in.

Again, this is only for those who aren't blogging for fun alone. I've had to join groups, follow/get to know other bloggers, clog my friends' Facebook newsfeeds (sorry guys) with my posts and enlist my poor husband to spread the word. 

This type of self-marketing will have to continue if I want to have any kind of online presence. I hate it, but it has to be done. Kind of like how you have to wear sunscreen: your hands feel greasy afterwards, but it means you won't burn.

If you really want to do this, don't waste time umming and ahhing and researching before you start blogging. If you try to make a perfect blog from the start, you'll never actually start. Just throw yourself in and try to swim. You may look and feel like you're floundering around, but you'll get there in the end (at least, I hope so. I'm still waiting).

That's right. You won't always do things gracefully and you'll probably end up with people criticising you. I've no idea whether that's happened to me yet, but I've no doubt it will at some point - if it hasn't already. You may even accidentally do such hideous things as (oh and I can barely even find the strength to write these words) MAKE SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ERRORS.

ERRORS! ROBOTS! No, no - it can't be true! But it is. You'll make mistakes, whatever their nature, and people will see them. That's what happens when you put yourself out there. Live with it.

In sum

That's my list! I'm sure there's plenty more where that came from so I might write another one of these later. 

To any bloggers - have you had any of the above issues and/or do you have anything you can add to the list? I'd love to hear.