In the quiet midnight hours between finishing this year’s NaNo novel and… well, now… I was visited, as is the tradition, by three ghosts.
The first ghost showed me pictures of his grandkids. I pretended to be interested. Then he told me, “Writers need to blog – you need a platform – you need to blog two or three times a week.”
“I blog,” I said, perhaps a bit defensively. “And I’m on Facebook. Twitter, too. I have a platform.”
But the ghost shook his head.
“Your platform is a weak, spindly thing, incapable of supporting your weighty hopes and dreams. Its main plank is your blog, and I’m sorry to say, that plank is lacking.”
I tried to explain that I’d been too busy to blog properly, what the holidays and writing a novel and all.
“Oh, sure,” the ghost agreed. “That, and Minecraft.”
I hung my head.
His job done, the first ghost vanished in a puff of Old Spice, leaving me pondering what additional content I use to prop up my platform. While I was thinking of new stories to tell, a second ghost appeared. She wore glasses that made her look like a chameleon.
“Blog readers don’t want to read fiction,” she said. “Fiction is too long.”
“But the stuff on my blog’s only a thousand words,” I protested.
“Too long,” she said again. “What they want is to be informed more than entertained. Look at these writers. They’ve got whole communities spring up around their websites.”
I looked at the tabs in her GhostBrowser and saw she was right. These writers definitely had their platforms all figured out. But they weren’t blogging their stories, or even about their stories. They were blogging about writing itself.
“Writers blog about how to write?” I asked. The second ghost nodded, a thin smile under her glasses.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I don’t have any extra insights into the craft worth sharing. Besides, I don’t want to do that. I love writing, but I don’t get excited about how to do it, just the doing it.”
“Then I’m afraid your author’s platform will collapse,” she said, using the same tone of voice as the Emperor when he informed Luke that the space station was, in fact, quite operational.
The second ghost faded, leaving only her giant glasses, which at last vanished with a soft pop.
“Blog readers don’t necessarily want writing tips,” said a voice from the shadows. Ghost number three, I presumed. “They just want to learn things, and read your unique voice.”
“I can give ’em unique voice all day,” I said to the shadows. “But if I’m not blathering about writing, what else is there? I’m not blogging about what I had for lunch. I have some standards.”
“You have interests… passions… other than writing,” whispered the voice. “You are more than just a writer.”
“Well, yeah. There’s the whole game design thing.”
“Do that.”
I thought about it. The ghost was right. I had enough half-baked theories of game design to keep the old blog-tank at least half-full.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m still posting fiction, too.”
“Suit yourself,” said the voice, already fading to echoes. “But don’t blame me if no one reads it…”
