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Ken Follett's giant work The Pillars of the Earth (historical fiction) gets my attention every day now, as I plough through this complicated and fascinating story that features, among others, the character of Tom Builder. He's a master stonemason and a natural architect. Tom is poverty-stricken as to earthly goods or security and is wealthy in talent, skill, vision, and willingness to work hard. These qualities have been acquired, developed, and built over the years, including manhood and feeding a wife and growing family in the 12th century.
Ken Follett's giant work The Pillars of the Earth (historical fiction) gets my attention every day now, as I plough through this complicated and fascinating story that features, among others, the character of Tom Builder. He's a master stonemason and a natural architect. Tom is poverty-stricken as to earthly goods or security and is wealthy in talent, skill, vision, and willingness to work hard. These qualities have been acquired, developed, and built over the years, including manhood and feeding a wife and growing family in the 12th century.
I thought of Tom this morning when I set out to write about building an audience for a blog. Presently, this blog has a little over 8,000 readings and some much-valued followers. I want the blog to grow in interest for present and future readers. In Pillars of the Earth, Tom Builder is at early stages of restoring a ruined cathedral. That's the work he loves to do, and compared to his task, mind should look easy. Yet, it's got its own challenges. Here, I want to continue to add to the kind of support that can help authors, whether first-time book-writers or writers with one or more books already printed and released.
While bloggers are not building cathedrals, we are building skills, vision, and audience. As a blogger, I want to do the best I can at the time, at a particular moment and during the present month and year. Writers must keep writing. Unlike Tom, we do not have to wait for something to burn to the ground to get the attention of those who could use what we do.
What we have to do is to give readers time to find us and, when they do, to find good quality increasingly consistent for use and enjoyment. Not all readers have equal interest in specific blog postings, or articles. Yet, we can aim to inspire any reader in some way by including what is appealing, uplifting, and interesting, whether a quote, news flash, or example. That's what we do. That's what we enjoy doing.
Linking ways for an audience to grow and to find us more easily, we can use Twitter and Facebook and other links our readers may use, including LInkedIn, where you can also include links to articles or videos.
"How can I improve this blog?" We need to ask this question of our writing every day. Today, I added to the right column of this blog some information about my Twitter accounts, @OpinariPeople and @OpineBookCafe.
This is part of my vision about what you and I as writers are doing in our patch of the wide world.
This is part of my vision about what you and I as writers are doing in our patch of the wide world.
