Twitter – Page 2 – Linda Nelson

I guess you can’t have it all. I’ve come so far in the blogging world since I first ventured out in 2008. That is the same year that WordPress was born. It was just bare bones back then. Now look at it, over 2000+ plugins. Some of them work excellent and others are only wishful thinking.

I came across one today. It was for posting stories to your site. What a shame that it didn’t work. It was some fanfiction plugin that had real potential, that is until I tried to use it to post work in progress.

Oh well, I’m still amazed at what a lot of the plugins do. When I first started blogging, I was on MySpace. Do you remember that site? It was a great place to blog and find readers who would cheer you on while you learned the craft of writing. There were even those on that site that would give lessons in poetry.

Lots of groups too.

I was sad when they changed the site to an all music site. I’ve only been back there once or twice since, just for old memory sake. Funny how something like that can stick with you even when you can’t use it anymore as you had. FaceBook came about and we all went there instead. Some tried to blog on that site, but it just didn’t jive well.

I poked about on WordPress when it first came out, not being able to make heads nor tails of the site. I then found a website company that hosted a blog on their site. I used that for almost a year until I bought Microsoft Office 2010. That was when I discovered the ability to post direct from MO.

I did do a stint on Blogger, but I didn’t like working with their dashboard. Then I went back to WordPress, blogging at least once a week.

I began to accumulate many different sites. This past year I decided it was time to start consolidating. There was too many to choose from to post on. What better place to write than on your own domain WordPress. So I took the jump this past week.

Plugins Galore. The free WordPress doesn’t work with plugins. Or, I haven’t figured out how to get them too. But now that I’ve got a site that is hosted outside the free zone, things changed.

I’m sure I will be blogging much more now. It feels almost like how it felt on MySpace. Though I don’t have any followers on this site. Hopefully, they will come J

Works In Progress:

I’ve been out of work for almost 6 weeks due to major surgery. Four of those weeks, I barely sat behind the keyboard, it was too uncomfortable. Now I believe I’m ready to get back in the swing of things, and back to work. It wasn’t much of a vacation. All that time was spent healing.

Oh yeah, works in progress. I have a few that I’m working on. There is this one – my main one – that is about a woman who wants to be a Knight/Dame during the medieval period. It’s one of those swanky romances, to be published under my other name.

I’m also gearing up to give my Fantasy, Aaron & Keja an overhaul. The story is pretty good. I published it a few years ago, but my style and voice has changed so much. When I go to work on the third book in that series, it may not sound like the same person. This means that I will also have to re-write Witch Book too. When I do, both books will get new covers too.

So lots going on.

How about you? How has your writing been going?

Now if only Grammarly made a plugin for WordPress, blogging would be a breeze.

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Do you belong in this day and age as a writer? Do you feel comfortable being an author of the 21st-century?

Over the past five years the face of publishing has changed drastically. Gone are the days where writers wait years to find a publisher who will like their work and see to it that it makes it into print.

We have entered into the age of instant gratification. In this day and age we want it and we want it now. Long gone are the days of having to search a street for a payphone to make a needed call. Almost everyone has cellphones.

Then there is the internet. In the beginning it was all dial up. At first it seemed instant but as time went on we learned that there were faster methods out there for us to use. That gave way to the birth of DSL and broadband.

Social Media began to develop next. We began to reconnect with friends we hadn’t heard from in ages. My Space was one of the first, quickly followed by Face Book and Twitter.

How has all this affected publishing in the 21^st century?

Our Instant Gratification has led to an army of self-publishing authors who are taking the writing world by storm. They are like the zombie armies in the movie World War Z and they can climb over giant walls to get their books published and out there for their readers to find.

Being an author in the 21^st century means you need to learn how to do it all. You need to learn to be your own marketer, your own publishing house and your own cheerleader. You have to be bold and persevere.

You need to learn that even though we are in a time period of instant gratification you need to learn to wait. Selling books to readers who do not know you exist does not happen overnight it takes time.

So if your book sales are not where you think they should be then do something about it, but make sure it is the proper thing to do.

You ask, what should that proper thing be? Well – just write another book and after that write another and then another and so on, eventually they will find you.

How are you surviving as a writer in the 21^st century? I would love to hear about your trials and travails.