So We Gather

Jul 15, 2009 by Naomi.

Last night’s meeting with a group of authors, published and wannabe, was a pleasure. This gathering is entitled “PNWA-TC” and the concept is to have a local link with the Pacific Northwest Association in the greater metropolitan area of Seattle. Of those who attended, one is an author awaiting final review of her childrens books by a large publishing house, one is preparing a queiry for his war series, one has a novel self published with the high end iUniverse package and myself with a completed western romance SAGESONG using the iUniverse economy package, also WILDLY IN THE ROCKIES self published on CreateSpace now on Amazon, and THE OPEN DOOR and BEYOND NAMCHE awaiting proofs from CreateSpace.

Meetup is a national corporation into which a person has to pay to start and maintain their MEETUP group. The leader of this writer Meetup group brought forward the subject of author websites and especially their blogging. And naturally the discussion was what is a blog? What does it contain? How often should the blog be refreshed? Here suggestions flowed. The point being that the website is about the author. Readers want to know about the author’s personal interests, the family, hobbies, and why they write, therefore various individual pages can contain those details.

But what of the blogs? What indeed should the subject be? Writing? How to write? Personally I think a how-to may be helpful now and then. I do not have that much experience in teaching writing or grammar and my helpful hints will be brief in those areas. But my mind is full of experiences in many other ways — travel, nature, philosophy, love, art, and community. The only bearing my blogs have on writing will be in sentence construction and a description and flow of reasons for the subject I choose. Whether visitors to my blog site are casual or frequent depends on how my words hook them to return. That is not my concern. I simply blog along.

My experience with Meetups, however, brings out a crucial action. I attend when invited for some subject which on the surface catches my interest but without ongoing content I do not return. I have no inclination to form a Meetup group on my own. Atheist Meetups satisfy my philosophy and volunteer hours at the McNary National Wildlife Education Center satisfy my heart.

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