Writing, as I have repeatedly said in this blog, is necessary for life to me. I would not still exist today if I couldn’t put words to paper (I mean metaphorically, of course, since I wrote this on my malfunctioning laptop.)
But I don’t mean in any way to imply that it is any kind of “normal human life” to be a blogger. It is, in fact, a rather bizarre and chaotic life where you have to juggle a multitude of wacky, crazy, depressing, unruly, and downright ugly things that happen at random to any and every human being (I was going to say, “living human being.” But the fact is, it happens like that for the dead ones too.) As a blogger, you are trying to take all that chaotic nonsense and organize it into words and paragraphs that makes it all into a reasonably sensible thematic something that people are tempted to actually read. (“Tempted” here probably means lured in to find out what this mass of typing is really all about by the naked fairy-girl that is in the lead illustration.) (You would be surprised at how often my penchant for drawing nudes draws in people looking for porn and gets them to stay and read the story that goes with the picture.)
Technically this is a book blog. It was established for me as an author’s blog by I-Universe Publishing for my traditionally-published novel Catch a Falling Star, which is what this blog is named for. It is supposed to be an effective marketing tool for selling books and getting people interested in finding out more about my books, and about me, and especially about clicking on the ads that appear in this blog-space.
But I am apparently terrible at using it for what it was meant for. There is absolutely no correlation between this book blog and book sales. Through I-Universe I have made about $16,00 (really, sixteen dollars! since 2013, and they haven’t even sent that money to me yet, because the threshold for sending a check in the mail is $25,00,) They have made a lot more money off of selling me marketing services than they ever have off of my award-winning book (Really, again, the Editor’s Choice Award and the Rising Star Award, both together worth precisely diddly-squoot.) My blog itself costs me $98.00 a year, and I have only made back $10.00 on ads revenue. So, being an author is only going to make me a millionaire very, very, very slowly.
But what I do get from this blog is a couple of critical things.
It is a place where my artwork and story-telling skills can see the light of day outside of a middle-school classroom. I learned to fascinate people with my cartoons on a chalkboard and stories that begin with things like, “One time the former President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River while…” (Yes, that one could’ve gotten me fired if kids had told their grandmothers what they were learning in Mr. Beyer’s class when they got home from school, but they laughed so hard that they forgot everything they learned in class.) (Unfortunately, they mostly forgot Math Class and Science Class as well.)
And I get some feedback about how well or how poorly my writing comes across to the reader. (I can get a “LOL” in the comments, or a good “What the hell was that supposed to be about?”) It gives me an idea about what to keep and what to change when I do it all again the next day.
People are actually reading this blog, and my books as well. Yesterday I got 204 views and 21 likes on WordPress and there was only one naked girl in the pictures I used with the blog post. Just today I got a very insightful five-star review on my book Sing Sad Songs. So, I am getting read and being successful as a writer. ($3.75 in royalties from Amazon was paid to me on Friday. So, I could almost claim to be a professional… if I cut down on expenditures quite a bit.)
Sometimes all you want to do is doodle-bop!… To draw in pen and ink and post your derfiest doofenwacky doodles so you can just make your way through another danged day.
Catch a Falling Star 