Hey everyone. I am finally back again after my unannounced year hiatus. I am excited to be back and ready to finish this series so that we can start up on some stand-alone posts and a new series that I’m planning for later this year. This post should continue on a little bit from what I wrote about right before my hiatus last year. So, without further ado…
Develop As A Writer: Read Lots Of Writing Blogs
On a continuation of the last post, this week will be about things you can read to improve as a writer. Instead of referring you to specific types of books though that will help you improve this post will be mostly about the different kind of writing related blogs you can read to improve as a writer. And each of them will help you improve in different ways. From advice blogs to professional blogs – writing blogs are a useful place to find useful information to help you to develop further as a writer.
Advice Blogs
Advice blogs are a useful form of writing blog that are one of the most commonly used blog by writings who are looking to advance their writing or encourage themselves and other writers in their own writing journey. This is an advice blog. I chose to specifically write an advice blog because it would help me to share the writing knowledge I have learned with other young writers and also helped to encourage me to do my own research into writing facts to advance my own writing skills.
But writing blogs can have all sort of writing content just as this blog does. Some good examples of advice writing blogs are places like Reedsy and Writer’s Digest. Writer’s Digest has many different parts of their blog that aren’t just advice but the general idea behind a lot of their blog posts are giving advice and helping to advise many different writers in their writing (whether it is fictional or not). Reedsy is definitely more of a writing blog focused primarily on fiction writers but does address other areas of writing like copywriting, technical writing, and nonfiction writing. Both of these blogs are good resources for advice blogs. Blogs like this would be advice blogs.
Publisher Blogs
Every major publisher has some sort of website. Those websites have all sorts of pages on them including ways to send in your submission to their slush piles, contact forms, or author pages for their best selling authors. Most of these websites also have some sort of section that would be considered a blog. Sometimes they aren’t labeled as a blog. Sometimes they are labeled more as a news page where they will announce things like the most recent publication and their newest writing contest.
But these news feed pages (or official blogs if they do have one) are considered good sources of publisher blogs. For those of you who aren’t really familiar with publishers that you might want to look up I would suggest collecting all your favorite books and find out their most common publisher and check for their webpage and blog. I personally love Tor’s website and blog. They always have good information on both some advice, author interviews, and writing contests. I also am personally partial to Dragonsteel Books as well.
Recommendation Blogs
There are two different kinds of recommendation blogs. There are the big company recommendation blogs and there are small personal blogs written by individuals. Both are very good sources of recommendations. The biggest problem with big company recommendation blogs is that there is always a slight fear that their recommendations are based on who is paying them the most so you should also be careful which ones you use and which ones you trust. Small personal recommendation blogs also have the small flaw of personal bias that is included in their recommendations. But if you can find a personal recommendation blog where the writer tends to agree with you personally than those are the write kinds of blogs to follow.
There are quite a few big company recommendation sites and some of them you might be familiar with. It really depends on what you are looking for to be recommended. I generally am looking for book recommendations or author recommendations and so I tend to use big company sites like Goodreads or Epic Reads. There are many other recommendation blogs that you can find easily for all sorts of different things. Personal recommendation blogs are harder to find in their own separate form. Not a lot of blogs are purely recommendation blogs. Most of the time writers will have a post every once in a while that is a recommendation post. I do a recommendation post for books every once in a while, cooking bloggers occasionally recommend their own favorite cookbooks or cooking products. But recommendation blogs are also useful for developing as a writer.
Editors Blogs
Editor blogs are useful but again – they are a bit harder to find on their own. Many editors either do not have a blog or they are also a writer and so their blog would also fall under a Published Author blog (the following section) rather than an editors blog. If you have more networking you would probably be able to find more editors blogs that I can using simply my access to the internet. (If you do have any good recommendations for editors blogs feel free to leave it in the comments section!)
The few editors blogs that I was able to find would be Reedsy which you will probably notice I also included under Advice blogs. Reedsy (from what I can tell) has a blog that is mostly an advice blog which is why I listed it there first. However, most of these Reedsy posts are written by either published authors or editors. You can also get access to the NY Book Editors blog. They usually also have good advice posts. I did find a single personal editor’s blog for editors, proofreaders, and writers. Here is the link.
Published Author Blogs
The last type of blog that I will suggest is a Published Author blog. Published author blogs are useful for both news about your favorite authors but also for the occasional blog post on advice. These types of blogs are more likely to be useful for author news such as their publication dates and writing updates but a lot of authors can’t help providing the occasional piece of good advice for young writers as well.
I don’t have many suggestions for these types of blogs since everyone has a different author that they really like. I personally follow any of the ones I like a lot. Just some of these would include James Patterson, Rick Riordan, and Brandon Sanderson to name a few. Whichever authors you really like, find their website/blog and subscribe to their emails or check on their page occasionally for news and writing advice.
That’s all I’ve got for this post. I’m so glad to finally be back here to be writing again. I’m hoping to keep up to date with these updates this time. As you can see, updates will be on Saturdays again as they used to be. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the link on the bottom of the page. Next week we’ll be talking about analyzing what you are reading to help you develop as a writer. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
Comments