Non-Tweeting

So it turns out the time has come. Critical mass must just have been reached. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be typing out my first blog post. I’m starting a blog because I am an author. Because it seems to be what published authors do.

It’s all to do with, you know, building an audience, creating a followership. It’s about branding, and Internet presence, and being available to your readership. It’s about being current and savvy… and it’s a bloody massive headache, an ongoing responsibility, and a cringe-inducing, red-faced waste of time when I should be working on my novel—a ridiculously self-conscious act. After all, authors can be very shy, reclusive—we may have a lot to say, but we tend to create characters to deal with our foibles, rather than airing them to the neighbors them like so many sagging-elastic, graying underpants (—that’s what critique group is for after all).

So, for right now, I’m choosing to remain anonymous—perhaps until I attain some fabulous famous-ity and embarrassing wealth.

Because as yet, despite years of dedication, rumination on the imminence of my success, and blowing my nose on rejection letters, I’M NOT FAMOUS OR EMBARESSINGLY WEALTHY. Not yet. I’ve been in this business far too long, however, to be even semi-delusional (at least not on a daily basis). But I’m hopeful, and passionate, even after all these years, and I’m increasingly hard-working. And that’s paid off: thirteen years into it, I’m several times published.

But starting a blog is—in truth, for me at least—much more than an attempt to gain some notoriety. For me it’s about preempting a festering case of writer’s block before it has the chance to erupt.

Why would you want to read it?

• If you’re a fellow writer, I’ve been round the traps and I might share something useful.
• And if you’re a writer, I’m an experienced editor with a highly reputable editing network. I took the Editing Tests of Torture. I know my stuff. You can even ask me questions.
• Who knows, maybe you’ll just like me. I need to cheep, and Twitter—for all its bird-iness— just doesn’t do it for me.

So here goes,

Wordy-Bird