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Hi Linyang,
I first heard about blog novels back when I learned that Andy Weir’s “The Martian” began that way, before it was picked up by a publisher and later made into the Matt Damon movie by the same title.
That idea intrigued me, so I found out what Blogs were…I’m so out of touch..😜…and found that I could just get a free Blog on WordPress.com and start. So that is what I did. I just started, not really knowing what I would do with it. I first thought, why not attempt to do a kind of Fantasy “Pilgrims Progress” type of story as a daily devotional and see where that goes. I have written a number of short stories that were moldering unseen and unpublished in a box, but some were in old computer files, that I thought to implant through the general mainstory along the way and tie each one to a character. Make the character somehow linked with each short story, as a peek into who they were in another world, without making that connection immediately known. Seeming like an intriguing idea, so that is how it started….until the main story seemed to emerge and I realize the little side-stories were more of a distraction than a help. So I re-tooled and reorganized. (wasn’t much to organize because in initial drafts I tend to fly by the seat of my pants as a “panster”) And the more I got into it, along with my daily Bible study, I began to see parallel scriptures going along providing insight into what I was finding out about the story. These insights were God’s direction, for it began to unlock far deeper mysteries in the story than I could ever have come up with on my own.
The blog novel is a kind of Gideon’s fleece for me. I lay it out and see what side God makes wet and keeps dry. What flows and what doesn’t. What part is me trying to make it work, and what part is God revealing how it actually will work out. It humbles me to write this way. People can go online and see my mistakes, but that also helps me focus not on my shortcomings, but on the How of Him taking my small loaves and fish and adapting it miraculously into something bigger and more grand. I am in a constant learning curve, but with God, that will always be true. I just have to trust Him with the outcomes. I know He led me to it, and I feel Him guiding me in it, but I have no idea where it might go. I’m living the mystery.
One thing I do like about the blog posts on WordPress, is that I can go back and edit behind the scenes. Catch grammatical mistakes that I missed in my myopic read throughs, and update the prior post, without alerting everyone to the subtle changes. They just get to see the raw initial posts that hit my FB business page, but do not see when I refine them, so it will come as a surprise when the final draft is done and I send it to the publisher that has agreed to put it in book form.
Publishing this way is a humbling experience, but that is a good quality to have developed as an author. It is grounding. It allows others to see a relatable person who is a work-in-progress, rather than a finished draft. That God doesn’t finish with me even as I make the many, many writer mistakes along the way. I can always go back. I can touch up and…repent of my writerly ways…😉…and pick up again and move forward. I do have a Cutting Room section page on my Blog for those ideas that became too unwieldy or too wordy or too preachy. Whatever. But it is a journey that I am excited to be on.
I do have a page with all of the links to the Chapters in the correct sequence, for you will learn that sometimes you need to add a chapter or remove one, or even rename one. Let that page serve as your books Table of Contents. Provide a few sentences under each title, so you can get the sense of the chapter’s starting point, so you can view the structure as a whole. This allows it to be a kind of quasi-outline, and you can move into parts that you need to re-work easily using it as a larger framework. Break the sections up, to keep it modular in your mind. I have 70 chapters which are the first two books of this series. Book 1: From Dust Arise is Chapters 1-31, Book 2: A Swirl of Embers is Chapters 32-70, Book 3: Walls of Stone will be Chapters 71-??
Right now, I am revising Book 1, so that I can give the publisher the first book before…the turn of the century. 😜 I am going with a self-publishing package first, so I can manage the timeline, rather than write against a fix deadline and do a rush job while trying to meet my financial and family obligations as well.
My marketing strategy is non-existent at the moment, other than what shows up on my FB Business page to the 72 people who are “following it”. That’s okay too. Not seeking recognition for it, until I have something publishable.