Sometimes this blog annoys me, y'know?
I love you guys, you guys out there reading this right now, and that's entirely the problem. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO YOU. I don't want to just write a whole bunch of shit about myself, because wow that's boring, and if you honestly care about the mundane details of my life, I gotta say I might me judging you a bit right now. juuuuuudge
No but seriously. Obviously part of the point of this blog is publicity--selling books is good for the self-esteem and the bank account and all that, and if this inspires a few people to pick up a few copies of BREAK, yaaaay. But that's not the only reason I'm doing this.
Here's a secret about me that is probably not a secret at all: I really, really like unpublished writers. Almost 100% of the time, I like unpublished writers best of most people in the world.
Because I still feel like one of you all the time. I still feel like I need help and I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. And that makes blogging even more awkward, because what the fuck, I don't have words of wisdom, I just happen to have a book deal, y'know? It's just luck and numbers.
But if I can help you, I want to.
So the purpose of this book is basically to ask--how can this blog be the most useful to you? In an ideal world, what kind of things would I blog about? What would I tell you?
If you want to know more about my personal stuff--publication or otherwise--that's totally cool, I can blog about that (but I think you're weird and/or are confusing me with a celebrity). I could talk about (to an extent) what I'm working on now, and what my general writing process is. If you want more query contests and stuff, I can do that to. If you want more ranty advice posts, or more publishing-news type stuff...if you want me to have more attitude, that's easy, or less attitude, which is a little less easy, but still possible...hit me up, guys, how can this blog be the best it can be for you?
Monday, December 14, 2009
statement of purpose, I guess
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8 comments:
Hi, Hannah!
Um...well, to be honest, my "perfect blog" would be a mix of all these things. I like reading pretty much *anything*. Little details from other people's lives interest me. Not saying that I'm awfully interested in what you ate for breakfast today or stuff like that, but reading what you have to say about Brown is extremely interesting. Posts about your agent give me faith in writing. Posts about your struggle to get published give me hope. Yah. So, basically, write about what you want! Write about what you think is important. Anything.
I might be weird and/or confusing you with a celebrity, but in my mind you are a super interesting person, and I'd love to hear more about chya - you, Hannah, your trials, your triumphs. (; And RANTS! Rants are fun.
I'd say a bit of all of those. Personally, I love reading about (interesting) personal tidbits as much as I do writing posts. :)
What made me follow your blog was a really great post on remembering what your READERS want, and not being anxious over word count/show don't tell/MS format etc etc. It was just brilliant.
Oh, and this inspired me to go read Break.
Hahahaha "And that makes blogging even more awkward, because what the fuck, I don't have words of wisdom, I just happen to have a book deal, y'know?"
Brilliant!! I love your blog anyway but enjoy when you talk about your life AS a writer, and also when you point out amazing bullshit things like faux writing don'ts and stuff. Yous hella funny.
Hannah you do have words of wisdom! You told me not to freak out about my short word count and your posts somewhere (either here or on AW) made me feel SO much better about the fact that I used the word "fuck" 108 times in my 60k novel, lol.
I agree with Beth that a mix of everything you suggested for your blog would be freaking awesome :)
Hey Hannah,
I came across your blog and you hooked me because you were a teenager with both wise insights and fantastic writing. I've contributed to your slush fund by purchasing a copy of BREAK (that my husband will dutifully place under the Xmas tree for me). Kudos. If I were given the chance to choose, the blogs concerning your writing process are particularly fascinating. I loved the rant on word count that you put out there because it reminds us all that we should rant over the trifles of 'rules' as well. I absolutely loved reading your excerpts- dug into them with a spoon and here I am banging my fork on the table for more. If I'd been quicker, I would have thrown a query your way, but I wanted to finish my current story before I waded out into the query. I do have a question too, concerning sharing excerpts and manuscripts. Do you know what the rules are? Do you have friends read over your work? I've heard about Betas and know little about how that works too. I guess I'm asking for a blog on that if you can! Don't worry, Hannah, just keep on blogging and we'll all be reading. Take care! -M. Provencher
I love you, Hannah. :D I was thinking about doing an open-question blog post like this, but then I felt insanely presumptuous because I DON'T have a book deal - so I'm glad you're the one writing it. :D
Um...I love hearing about the writing process, because everyone's is so different. I love hearing good news from writers, or just hearing shout-outs to favorite people, blogs, editors, agents - because I like the warm fuzzies I get from seeing people acknowledge each other's awesome. Um...OH. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE query letters. And I'm insanely curious about what an agent's pitch letter to an editor looks like. I'll probably figure that out fairly soon (gulp) but they all seem different, so I love reading them, reading how agents pitch editors and how it's similar/different to how writers pitch agents.
Not sure if that helps or not... :P Again, YOU ROCK. Keep being awesome.
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