Crackling, glowing flames
And coals comfort,
Release, relax.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2007 Trevor W. Hampel.
Haiku #32: Campfire
Of Books and Bookshops
We went to Adelaide on Wednesday to do some shopping. When in our capital city Adelaide I try to squeeze in at least some time in a couple of favourite bookshops. I’m a sucker for spending time in bookshops and I have a few specialist areas in each shop where I tend to spend more time in than others. One interesting area I often frequent is the travel section. So many places to go, so many interesting books about the journeys of others and so many maps. (I collect maps as a hobby.)
This time I deliberately avoided the travel section. I have enough books and magazines to read already without adding to the several rather considerable piles awaiting my attention. Besides that, when I look at travel books, atlasses and other maps I tend to get an uneasy feeling. Some people call it itchy feet. Others call it wanderlust. Catching the travel bug. Perhaps it is the call to adventure, of other places, of destinations not yet reached.
Perhaps it is time I went on a holiday somewhere.No – I haven’t got time – I’m too busy reading the three books I bought in another section.
How to be a successful blogger or writer – or whatever
I think I’ve said it before on this blog, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Success in any endeavour is always the end result of work, hard work, sometimes incredibly hard work in overcoming difficulties and many set backs. People compliment me when I chair a meeting or I am MC* of a function or I speak in public saying how relaxed and confident I seem. This has not come easy for someone who was as shy and retiring as I was as a child. It has come through much effort, thought, planning and rehearsal.
A lifetime of effort
Blogging and writing is no different. It takes time and effort to be successful, long hours of seemingly fruitless, unrewarded effort. After a lifetime of writing endeavour I guess only a small fraction, perhaps as little as ten per cent of my writing has been published. Do I regret all that unpublished work? No way – it was my apprenticeship in the craft. And I’m still learning.
Sporting Success
Like so many other Australians, I enjoy watching all kinds of sports, especially those featuring Australians. The Aussies are fanatical about their sport and our success in sporting endeavour far exceeds normal expectations for a country of barely 21 million people. Many of my readers would be aware of the amazing achievements of Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, one of the greatest of all time. He makes breaking world records look easy and effortless. When he retired recently he admitted that he could no longer face endless hours of training. To get to the standard of performance he displayed took a lifetime of effort, lap after lap, day after day, year after year. There is no such thing as overnight success – in any field.
Steven Bradbury and Blogging
In the recently announced honours list here on Australia Day, Winter Olympic Ice Skater Steven Bradbury received an award. What has this got to do with blogging? Plenty. Steven was the first Australian Gold Medallist in the Winter Olympics. The realisation of his dream seemed accidental, but it was no accident. I didn’t realise all the hard work, the difficulties, the setbacks and the injuries that Steven had endured in order to have crack at success. And in the end it all paid off. Writing and blogging, like speed skating, can be a lonely pursuit with many long hours of effort. That’s what it takes.
Links:
For a more comprehensive article about Steven Bradbury and how his story can help your blogging, writing or whatever read this inspiring article by Darren Rowse. It even includes a video of Bradbury winning the gold medal.
How Steven Bradbury can make you a better blogger by Darren Rowse.
*Master of Ceremonies
Strategies for Blog Growth
There are many different strategies for growing your blog, its readership and your traffic. These strategies are endlessly debated on a large range of blogs. Many bloggers come to blogging expecting quick monetary returns. It doesn’t work that way.
Chris Cree on his blog Success CREEations has an excellent article about using the steady growth strategy he uses for growing his blog. He encourages the following sensible strategies:
A Winning Strategy
Personally I’m a fan of slow but steady natural blog growth. Here’s what I mean by that:
- Consistently write quality posts
- Read other blogs in your niche (have them in your feed reader)
- Comment those blogs in a way that adds value to the conversation
- Link to all the good stuff you find out there (with trackbacks)
- Be patient
You can read the whole article here. I recommend it.
Turning a blog into a book
When I started out blogging some eighteen months ago it was just a bit of fun. I just wanted a web presence and to be able to share my love of birds (see my birding blog here).
After some time I realised, with heaps of encouragement from my son, that blogging can be a serious writing activity, not to mention income generating. Since that realisation dawned on me, I have treated blogging far more seriously. The income is still modest, but the trend is encouraging and the potential enormous.
In the early days I did not associate blogging with traditional book publication. I could see the potential of selling an e-book as an offshoot from one’s blog, but not a printed book. More recently, however, there have been enough examples of this happening with other writers that it becomes yet another potential income generating avenue.
At this stage this process is not for me but may well be sometime down the track. I am more interested in producing an e-book at some stage. There may be some of my readers who are interested in taking this road. If so, someone has already successfully gone down that track.
Gina Trapani on her blog Lifehacker has explained the process she went through to write, develop and convert her blog into a printed book through a traditional print publisher. Read how she did it: part 1 and part 2.
Thanks to Darren on ProBlogger for drawing these articles to his readers’ attention.