Blogging: A Self-Evaluation

[ahunter3]

Blogging: A Self-Evaluation


communication, frustration, grandiosity, platform, literary agent, listening

I started blogging in earnest about 12 years ago, mostly because I kept running into the idea that all nonfiction authors have to have a "platform" if they want to snag a literary agent. By "platform" they mean a pre-existing audience already following what the author has to say whever it is that they say it.

But it was kind of contagious, this process of making these diaryesque entries, entries which rather quickly morphed into classroom lesson materials, with me playing Dr. Hunter, PhD in women's and gender studies, you know? I mean, that was the stuff I wanted to talk to the world about via the mechanism of my book, and presumably the lit agents not only want you to have a following, they want you to have a relevant following. Well, that was my thinking at the time at any rate. Besides, I wanted to put a lot of that stuff into words, to practice expressing it, to get it down. And ideally to reach out to people with it, share these concepts.

It turns out that people don't flock to a blog where they are lectured at, at least not unless they get a grade and some class credit for doing it. I had a handful of people originally, reading my blog posts, mostly other bloggers. But some of them drifted away from blogging and those who are still around have mostly stopped commenting and interacting.

Well, I'm also in a Facebook group someone set up, and the person who set it up keeps asking questions instead of providing lectures, and she gets much better interactive discussions going on.

I think it's been meaningful and appropriate that I've slowed my own blogging pace this last year. It's not that I'm giving up on this "communicate with other people" thing so much as thinking "this isn't working" and step enough back from what I've been doing to see what I'm doing wrong.

One thing I should try is asking questions. Creating space for the people who read what I've written to talk about what they think about various things.

I really am a self-immersed person, and here in this case I think it isn't so much that I haven't been caring what anyone else might think but that I somehow expected that me making a bunch of declarative expository intellectual content and flinging it out there was how you started a conversation. I thought people would talk back at me. But I didn't bother to invite anyone, just sort of assumed they'd show up!

I still have a lot to learn about this "communicate with other people" thing. I feel like I'm awful at it. Or I guess I'm reaching for a lot more than I'm able to grasp. Anyway, I've never been satisfied with how well I do it.


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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

I am still querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking readers for reviews and feedback. I think of it as a jam session at this point: sure I'd like to get it published, just like a musician wants to get their song recorded, but in the mean time the musician's still gonna want to play it for people. Same for me as an author! So come read what I've written! It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.






Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

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This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

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Comments

Interaction

[goatgodschild]

I haven't been sure what to say, either. I'm not attached to any publishing entities (I used to be friends with several self-published novelists, does that do anything for you?), so I haven't known what to say about your publishing troubles re:Within the Box.

[numinousdread]

Hi, I just wanted to note that I'm in the process of backreading your posts (here and on Livejournal), in case it means something to hear that someone is reading what you've posted (though I know it's not the following that publishers desire, of course). Radio silence is really frustrating and demoralizing, yeah. Your takes on gender stuff are definitely interesting and I appreciate the clarity of your prose as well. I've considered purchasing Genderqueer too, for what it's worth.
Apologies if this falls under "unwanted advice", but I wondered as I read this post if you're not getting a response because the platforms you're posting on are pretty low-traffic and also designed such that it's hard for new people to find your posts. (I found your posts via searching "genderqueer" on Livejournal, because I do "spelunking" on there where I backread old blogs and communities to see how conversations around gender have evolved.) Not necessarily advocating a platform jump (idk if that's feasible for you), but I don't think it's that you're lecturing or that your ideas are boring. If you would like advice on how to get more eyeballs on your work, I'm also happy to give you some, but again, I'm not going to assume that's what you want here, or that this issue is easy to solve.

[ahunter3]

Hi! How nice to see a basket of blog-entry replies! That's a rare occurrence.

Yes, I actually *don't* have a good sense of what to do to make my material more likely to be seen. I mirror my DreamWidth posts on LiveJournal and on WordPress (as mentioned above), was including Blogger for a while, then dropped it; briefly was using Substack but found it frustrating and dropped it.

I usually also echo my blog posts as Facebook posts on my "wall" and also in dozens of LGBTQ and/or gender focused Facebook groups. I get replies there more often than on DreamWidth or LiveJournal, but still not very often.

[numinousdread]

Hey, no problem. It feels a little weird and like putting oneself out there to leave comments on a stranger's post, but I figured you may appreciate it.

It seems like your chosen platforms don't create an opportunity to achieve virality, which I think can be a good way to get attention on your work. I usually find new writers/thinkers/creators as they're retweeted or reblogged by other people. I think building specific social connections can also be important (e.g. by commenting on other people's work or having friends who will promote your stuff). I don't have a ton of Twitter followers but I gained a few followers who have a decent-sized platform, and I've tapped into that occasionally (though more for family fundraisers than for professional stuff). That said, I don't use Twitter much these days as the social environment is not to my taste (and I suspect it would not be to yours).

I would consider looking into gender-related podcasts or how to pitch to smaller LGBTQ media as well, though I understand both of those involve skillsets you may not feel you have or want to sink time into developing. There are psych-critical/anti-psych/psych survivor networks on both Twitter (sigh) and Tumblr and those may be good to tap into for promoting or garnering interest for Within the Box. Leaning into a rhetorical persona as an older genderqueer person could be good too, because people on Tumblr especially skew young (though some of us are in our thirties now, certainly) and there's a general curiosity and desire to hear about how things were in the past.

Apologies if I'm misreading a cue and you'd rather not have heard my spiel, but those are my suggestions. Self-promotion is definitely a tricky game to play.

Again, I definitely think you're writing above-average stuff and I feel like you come off as a sort of... idk, smart person who developed his understanding of gender in an adjacent but somewhat distinct intellectual context to most people writing about these topics, and thus I value your perspectives and find them interesting (even though I don't always agree). So I don't think it's necessarily that your writing is bad, just that gaining a following is unfortunately dependent on things orthogonal to writing quality. What a world, eh?

[ahunter3]

I wanted some time to think before I penned a reply.

I have *long* recognized that I am seriously lacking in the skillsets that would be useful in attracting attention to the things I've written. I have paid exploitatively high rates for online seminars that very quickly left me feeling unable to use anything they were providing. It's like someone who says they don't know how to cook and need to learn taking a cooking course and the instructor begins with "OK this one should get you started on an easy foot, just preheat the oven to 350°, now oil this pan, let's shave some garlic here, now some of this jarred pesto..." but the student is thinking "I've heard of a stove...Is there a knob to turn it on? What do I oil the pan with? I didn't know garlic needed to shave..."

I'm profoundly incompetent at marketing, getting anything to catch on. As a consequence I'm very defensive and I blot stuff out of my consciousness so I don't have to stare at it feeling miserable.

I'd love to get any kind of help I could actually use, it means a lot to me, but I'm probably a student most likely to make any such teacher utterly miserable.

[numinousdread]

Hmm, it seems unlikely that my advice or explanations of that advice are of better quality than what you got in the seminars, so unfortunately idk how much I can help. I could add detail to the advice I gave upthread, but it could turn a bit unintelligible because things that feel intuitive or like common knowledge are actually not shared, consist of a bunch of little steps that I haven't spelled out, or are not conducive to being broken into little steps in the first place. Feel free to ask me any clarifying questions you have, but I understand if it's an aversive prospect due to the "ok so what is a stove?" aspect.
Sounds like you've put a lot of energy into trying to gain skill in this area, as well as sharing writing on multiple platforms, but you feel pretty stuck and discouraged.