Hitting the Books

This blogging business is deceiving. What could be simpler than an on-line diary, your own personal street corner from which to proclaim your thoughts and feelings to the world? Ah, but there’s a catch–unlike said street corner, where every passerby is a potential listener, you’ve got to attract people to your website (I believe the technical term is “drive traffic”). Therein lies my problem.

I’m not a Luddite, honest (tho’ I still prefer to write out my stories longhand). I’m actually pretty proficient at most technical stuff (that’s the official word for it. Stuff. If you look on page 667 of the Microsoft Handbook for World Domination, you’ll see “All technological applications will hereby be known as ’stuff.’” ) I can program a VCR without reading the instructions. I can make Word jump through hoops (and occasionally play dead if I’m not careful). I can even brainwash my computer into thinking it’s a record player. But when it comes to the Internet, I often feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. There are some highly explored territories in which I am comfortable. Email I’ve had since the early 90s. Travelocity, Ebay, Amazon…shopping in general is fine. Searching is a piece of cake too. But blogging is a whole different beast. So it was a big step for me to venture into this sector of the cyberworld and start a blog.

My husband the scientist–who teethed on a calculator and learned to walk by toddling towards a Commodore 64. Who spends more time on the computer than I spend awake, and who is well on his way to becoming an überblogger–is full of all sorts of helpful hints for me. I must sign up at Technorati and Blogspot and BlogBlogBlog and BlogExplosion and Carnival of Blogs and Blog of Blogs and Blog.blog and Blogorama and various and sundry other names which go in one ear, bounce around a few times like a pinball, and then speed their way out the other side. Listing with these sites will allow my site to show up in searches of keywords like “book reviews” or “writing” or “stay-at-home moms with diaper-brain.”

Even more vital (according to hubby) is the visiting and leaving of comments on other blogs. Choosing where to go is rather like those old, old computer adventure games. First you have to find a starting point. Okay, I thought to myself. I can do that. A kind young lady left a comment on my blog, so I’ll return the visit. On her blog I found oh-so-many interesting websites related to writing and publishing. So I started clicking on those. And on each of those websites were more websites, and more, more, and before I knew it I was in a room with many doors, an empty birdcage in my hand, and an angry dwarf chasing me with an ax. Thank goodness for the back button on my browser.

Anyhow, it is extremely difficult to draw a line on how far from Website Prime I’m going to travel before calling it quits. I could spend my entire life click click clicking away on my poor little mouse, and still have websites to visit. There are so many relevant sites, but I can’t visit or link to all them. Which should I visit? How am I to choose? Should I even attempt another foray into the dark jungles of the blogosphere, or should I just stay safe at my homepage and hope other, more seasoned, explorers find their way to my site? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

And then there’s the issue of comments. Each comment must be carefully scripted and polished so as to attract readers to your site to discover the source of such wit and sagacity. If I spent as much time writing my books as I do trying to write meaningful comments (or these posts for that matter), I’d have more novels to my name than Barbara Cartland. Where do all these other writer-bloggers find the time? Are their muses more generous with the outpourings of inspiration? Actually, it’s probably 1. they’re not sleeping near as much as I am, and 2. they’re not suffering from an advanced case of diaper-brain (not that I’d trade the source of said diaper-brain for anything, including a publishing contract).

Well, I think it’s time to stop writing and start surfing again. I’ve got my pith helmet and trusty machete ready. Hopefully this time I’ll choose the link that doesn’t have the angry dwarf at the end of it. (And you know, I never did find out what the birdcage was for…)