Write What You Love but with Quality

One of my Facebook friends shared this one yesterday.  Isn't this so true?  Every day is a new day to change what we don't like, start fresh and go on a new journey.  And then, we get to do it all over again and again.

Here we are with another day to write down the bones of our existence.  We love to write and we love to blog.  There isn't a big difference between a blogger and a writer.

Both of us are in it for the duration.  The blogger concentrates from article to article, whereas a writer might often think in the longer term.  I guess I would be contradicting myself here.  Actually, both are usually in it for the long term.  The serious blogger is going to stick it out for a good three to five years or maybe longer.
And we're both writers.

Some bloggers blog as if keeping a journal.  There are Mom bloggers, bloggers for every niche and bloggers who want to blog about making money.

But we're all writers on some level and need to write with quality always.

So, whether you want to be a well seasoned writer, blogger, poet, or any other form of a writer, do what you love first and foremost.  And above all, write with quality.

Think about your hook, line and sinker and reel your readers in.  But also, as a writer and a blogger, you always need to practice honesty with your readers.  Be real.  Be true.  Be you.

Never deceive them.  This would always be with your writing.  Never tell lies, unless you are writing fiction.  Fiction is about the only time where you can lie.  But then, even with fiction you have to make everything believable.

Nobody is going to want to read about a woman who goes out all night and doesn't leave her children with a babysitter.  Or about a man who can fly, but then can't stay in the air.  Yeah, he can fly but then again he can't.  You have to make everything seem plausible.

When you are writing fiction, you also want your readers to believe in your heroine and hero and other major characters.  You want them to know them inside out and they always want to see them change in some way in the end of the novel.  There needs to be a well written beginning, middle and ending.

Come to the conclusion and then end it with a bang.

I always think a good element of surprise is great with novel writing.  I do believe that you shouldn't tell all you know in the first chapters.  Keep your reader guessing.  But also, you can't leave them hanging.  Your job is to keep them turning the page to learn something new.  Don't use too many questions in your novels.

Readers don't like a lot of questions.  It's okay to have some questions as long as it's relevant and important to the novel.  But a reader will get annoyed if there is too many questions.  I learned this as I had finished my first romance novel, Lustful Evangelean and my local editor said I had too many questions. And sometimes she would say that I would repeat things and kind of say the same thing often.

I think after writing a first novel, you learn to become a more practiced writer.  My editor had said to me, "Maybe your next novel will be even better."  I think I achieved that with Black Roses, my first mystery.  And who knows, maybe The Glorious Money Tree will be even better.

But, we should be honest with our readers all the time.  Even when we would like to earn money with our blogs.  Always let them know where your ads are coming from if you are running someone's ads on your blog.  Like for me, I am running Linkshare ads, Clickbank and of course Google Adsense.  Which I'm not sure how effective Linkshare and Clickbank are, but I'm going to try them out.

                                                    I have got to force myself to take some time to make some new paper dolls.  My passion for writing tends to take over.  I should do this before the year is out.  Set a goal.


And then if you are selling your own quality items like I am trying to get off the ground, then you need to be honest with all your potential clients that it is quality and that they will receive an item as described, well packaged and with the fact that if someone isn't happy with their product that they always get a full refund.  The customer is always right.

And it is good customer relations to have good communications and  quality service.  You will go much further if you always practice this.  I do this well with my Ebay sales and I have become a quality seller.  People trust me.

That's why also when you are blogging and writing and gaining your readership, you always have to be up front and honest with your readers.

After all, you want them to come to trust you, trust in your products that some might someday want to buy or pass it onto someone who would be interested in the items.

Although for me, paper dolls are a specialty and I knew going in that it's not a necessity.  But there are women who like them.  I have also had buyers tell me that they are too beautiful to cut up.  I work hard on my backgrounds too.  I will say that nobody ever gets the original paper doll.  But all of them are printed on good quality card-stock and packaged in a protective sleeve.  And then if I get a mail order I like to wrap in pretty tissue paper and bubble wrap.  Mostly, so far I have sold them at craft shows and the rare mail order through a specialty paper doll trade magazine.  I did get two mail orders and I was so surprised it happened.

I sold a set of handmade photography cards years ago through a mail order catalog I created and mailed to places.  I got lucky and got one order from a girl in Portland, Maine who had a small hat shop and she wanted some of my cards for the shop.  This was long before we had all this free advertising over the internet.

And years ago, I got lucky and sold some handmade cards through Ebay.  I had one buyer who purchased one or two times and loved them.  But Ebay is definitely a finicky place to sell handmade items.  Sometimes it sells and sometimes it doesn't.  I think a lot of Ebay buyers just want to get a bargain and don't want the craft items.  So, I guess that's why we have Etsy.  But there you need to really do all your own advertising to be successful at it.

So, same goes for a blog that you want to become successful and for wanting your handmade items and business to get off the ground, you need to be honest.  Keep producing quality writing that is going to have your readers coming back as faithful readers.  Be honest always.  Let them know who you are.

And above all, write what you love, be patient and good things can come.  The sky could be the limit.  Dream.  Hope.  Faith.  Believe that anything can happen and you could be well on your way.

A blog or a novel doesn't happen over night.  Well, technically Black Roses took a month to write and a month to edit, but it didn't land me millions or hardly anything financially.  But it was still worth the learning experience.

You hear of the occasional success story, where I would also say there was a little bit of luck that played into someone's success.

And then you hear about someone who had a success story, but it took them perhaps half a life time to do it.  The majority of us wait patiently for our fruits and hard labor to harvest.  For some of us it finally happens.  And then there are those of us that wait our whole lives hoping that someday we become successful, famous,  and financially set.  And for many of us, we end up being all the unknown Van Goghs of the world.

But to be real truthful, it doesn't make the one who got lucky any smarter, more of a genius and talented than the unknowns.  There is tremendous talent that goes unsaid all over this world. It's really too bad when someone is so talented and they end up going to the other world undiscovered.  But isn't it the way of it?

But, I would say it would be a different story if there was someone that was so talented, and chose to be selfish and keep it all to themselves.  Talent should never be locked up for nobody to see.  If you have it, share it with others.  Talent is to inspire.  Motivate others to create their own masterpieces.

We should be in this big melting pot together.

The world is a better place when everyone shares and becomes a well loved community.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted June 28, 2012


Yay, my first article today.  I played hooky yesterday and instead was a blog hopping social butterfly all day.  Now, I've got to get cracking.

Next, I should be going to write at least Chapter Nine of the Glorious Money Tree.  I've got to either write about little Sally getting bullied in class or her mother having a scrabble morning with her friend and spilling a secret.  And then Sally needs to talk to Flavia the fairy again.  Last she talked with her, Flavia was flying to China to help a crying little girl.  Sally is going to want to know what happened with the girl on the other side of the world.

Maybe I should also be writing a blog post about writers and plots.  The different types of writers.  I will be honest and say, I am a writer who goes with the flow.  I don't have this big plot that I have planned out ahead.  I do have a general idea.  You do have to kind of know something about where you want your novels to go.

                                             Jennifer Jo Fay Fancy Photography    (I took this one last spring.  I'm due to go on another flower photo session soon.


Two more photo editing places I learned of are:

picmonkey and befunky

It's cool to know we have other photo places online to edit and play around with our stuff.