Setting up a blog

In order to be in the best position to promote yourself and your writing, it’s well worth setting up a blog. In case you find this idea a bit alien, here’s why you should take the trouble to do this.

A blog offers you the opportunity to start building an audience for your work and the chance to experiment with writing about yourself and with different kinds of writing. Many successful writers’ blogs start with a small readership of family and friends, but build a good audience over the years. Relax and just write what comes naturally, it makes sense for your blog to be more informal, more personal than a standard piece of non-fiction writing and more lively than a slice of autobiography, as there are no conventions that go with it.

Wiki blog defines it thus; ‘A "blog" is an abbreviated word for web-log, a web-based journal in which people can publish their thoughts and opinions on the Internet. It is everyone's home on the world wide web and probably their number one venting venue. Anyone can start a blog. It's straight-forward and, in a lot of cases, costs less than 100 dollars.’

A blog is a chance to let it all hang out, to be provocative or not, to write about a wide range of different subjects or to stick to just one or two. Above all, it’s a piece of writing that doesn’t oblige you to follow other people’s rules, a place which you can make your own and develop however you wish.

Many writers have found a blog a brilliant place to build a following and they’ve also found the interaction with their readers useful. Writing is a solitary activity and feedback from out there often helps.

Go on the web and see what’s out there from other writers if you want to see how it’s done. Two blogs which are worth investigating, out of the many hundreds of thousands out there, are Baroque in Hackney

Katy Evans-Bush's elegant blog about poetry, arts and culture, which has become a must-read for many. baroqueinhackney.com/

, Katy Evans-Bush’s highly individual take on the literary world and Della says OMG by the now very successful chick-lit writer Keris Stainton, who started it as a means of developing her writing. Bestselling writers Kate Mosse and Darren Shan also have interesting blogs.

It’s easy to get started on the web. Just choose from the many sites which offer to help you set up your blog and then get writing.

Wikihow Start a blog

Baroque in Hackney

Keris Stainton: Della Says

Kate Mosse’s blog

Darren Shan