So I’ve figured out that every author’s website needs a blog. I don’t know how to write a blog. I regularly scribble in my journal (hardback spiral bound, fountain pen, corner of the couch, coffee) which nobody reads. Once every couple of months I write something in a box on my Facebook site. But a blog? In verb form, “to blog” means to produce a particular kind of fresh, smart, friendly prose that must seem to be written quickly. (Okay, I have ten more minutes.) The blog (noun) should be personal, off the cuff, and full of interesting detail. I have friends who blog, brilliantly. I enjoy reading their blogs. I wish I had their panache.
This blog must be public, and it must connect to Riders in the Storm, a novel I’m proud to have written and extremely glad to have finished. There are eight complete versions on my computer, many versions of each chapter, and several file drawers full of notes. And, I suppose, there’s a lot to say about it. I’ve written a “sixties novel” not because I wanted to, but because I’ve known I had to write about 1968 ever since January 1969, and once I figured out how, in 2002, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I had hopes that it wouldn’t be “just another sixties novel” – because it takes place in Cleveland, the year before the river caught fire, and because it deals with a current question: how do you handle becoming an adult in a world full of cataclysmic events, including an overseas war that’s doing a lot of damage, an increasingly unfair and exploitative division of wealth, and a good deal of injustice?
Ten minutes is up. More soon, as I get the hang of this.
Already I can't figure out how to make a second post. I'll have to settle for a comment.
ReplyDeleteToday I gave my first book talk to a class-with-visitors at Firelands College in Huron, up near the Lake. I wore my black skirt and (for the first time) a red jacket that looks like it belongs behind a podium: a uniform for the author giving a book talk & reading.
Questions they asked: 1. What music did you listen to in order to get yourself back to the sixties era? Answ. Dylan of course. A little Rolling Stones. Then I blanked. Should have mentioned Phil Ochs and Judy Collins' "In My Life" Album (isn't that what it's called?). 2. Which character is you? Answ. All of them. I'm a complicated person; I can easily become three people. That's partly true. People who know me well would not be fooled. 3. Did it feel like the war was there, with you, all the time? Were the men you knew all charged up with it? That was the most interesting question. There was the Draft, of course. Beyond that I had to think about that sense of being charged ... I don't think it was possible to forget about the war. Ever. But it's hard to remember.
For every nifty statement there's another, complicating or contradicting it.
it should say new post when you sign in or in the top bar when viewing your blog. you click that and it will let you add a 2nd, 3rd...nth post
ReplyDeleteSeth
I want to read your book! Go Susan! And you will get the hang of this blogging thing; don't compare yours to anything else, just use it however it feels most useful to you. (love, amanda panda)
ReplyDelete