3 Reasons Why Blogging is Essential for Tagalog Romance Writers

If you're a tagalog romance writer and you're not convinced that you should start blogging, this post is for you. I want to change your mind, and convince you that, hey, blogging can actually help your writing career.

I'm hoping these three reasons will make you create a Wordpress or Blogspot account right away:

1. Blogging is  great way to connect with your readers.

Don't you want your readers to fall in love with your books and your winning personality?

When I read Rebel Heart by Elise Estrella a couple of years ago, I loved it so much that I simply had to get more information about her other books. I googled 'Elise Estrella' and stumbled across her blog Elisean Plains.

She had a lot of posts about writing and her life in general. Reading her blog, I saw how much work and thought she put into her books. I even saw that she had an Excel file for her Sentinels series!

Also, I had no idea that Rebel Heart was actually the second book in a trilogy, and I ended up hunting down the other two books. This can happen to YOU too.

I have no idea why, but, most of the time, it's difficult to find information on tagalog romance writers on the Internet. Only a handful have blogs or websites, making finding information about them or their books close to impossible

2. Blogging lets you help other writers.

I still have a long way to go in terms of my writing career, but I've received a lot of emails asking for writing advice.

Where do you get your ideas?

How do you get published?

How do you format a manuscript?

I've tried to reply to every single one of those emails, because replying feels a lot like paying it forward. And you know how they found my email address?

They found it by clicking the Contact page on this blog.

When I first started working on my first book, His Secondhand Heart, I sent a lot of emails to Elise Estrella and a bunch of other writers from our publisher, My Special Valentine. They all replied and gave me a lot of great advice about writing and getting published.

The tagalog romance writing community is vast and magnaminous, and blogging is a great way to be a part of it.

3. Blogging forces you to write on a regular basis.

If you're one of those organized people who write a set number of words everyday, congratulations. You can skip this part.

However, if you're like me and tend to write in sporadic bursts, blogging will force you to write on a regular basis.

I've come to believe that maintaining a blog is a lot like keeping a pet alive. You have to write posts on regular basis, which is a lot like feeding a pet on a daily basis. You have to update your layout once in a while, which can be compared to bathing your pet when it starts to stink.

In fact, blogging can help you improve the one thing that you need in order to become a successful tagalog romance writer. Your writing skills.

These are only some of the reasons why you should start a blog right away. There are probably more, and I won't be able to discuss all of them in one blog post. If you have more questions about blogging, feel free to let me know in the comments or you can shoot me an email at camrynmorrell@gmail.com.

So, what are you waiting for?

Think of a spiffy blog title right now.

Posting Regularly: A Breeze Or A Challenge?

(via deviantart)

I've always had a problem with being consistent. Personally, I think it's one of my greatest flaws. For example, I had a goldfish when I was seven, and I always forgot to feed it. Well, I soon found it floating in my aquarium with Xs over its eyes. My mother said it died of hunger.

She really didn't need to point that out.

Anyway, so if I forgot to feed my pet goldfish (a living, breathing creature), why should posting regularly on my blog be any different?

I find it so hard to do something regularly. Yes, I eat, breathe, and sleep regularly, but that's about it. I become a super-student for a couple of days, and that quickly gets old. I become a fan of a particular musical genre, but then that particular genre soon disappears from my mp3 player.

Okay, so, by now, I think you get my point.

Over the past couple of years, I think I've started about twenty blogs, and they all died slow dwindling deaths. This one is actually a record-breaker since I managed to post every month (that's a big achievement for me) since I started it.

According to every blog-writing article I ever came across, posting regularly is one of the golden commandments a blogger should follow.

And I find it really difficult. So, thank God I managed to post today.

What about you? Do you have trouble posting regularly on your blog?

Through My Myopic Eyes

I've been jumping from one writer's blog to another lately. Some of them were funny, some were serious, while all were definitely inspiring in one way or another. Aside from getting published, most of their entries tackled different elements in writing like plot, characters, settings, and a ton of other issues involving writing.

I just started my blog, and I'm simply flailing around. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I haven't found my own "blogging" voice yet. Also, I have no idea what I want to say.

All I know is that I want to write about writing.

That's it.

But how?

And will anyone even bother to listen to me?

My questions scare and excite me at the same time.

In the meantime, here's the prologue of my current WIP. I want to know what you think. It's only a rough draft, so please be kind. :)

Prologue

Through my myopic eyes, the world looks like a painting. The sky is a gigantic blue smudge with white cottony clouds. Do you remember that game kids play when they try to find things in the clouds? You know, they point out a particular cloud that looks like an elephant or maybe a pig or a cartoon character.

I do that a lot. I lie on the grass, take off my glasses, and stare at the clouds. The clouds stare back at me, and I blink a couple of times. Things are more interesting when I don't do that, when I don't have my glasses on and everything is a bit blurry and beautiful at the same time. I can feel the wind on my face, and my arms are tickled by blades of grass. The whole field is silent and I end up wishing I could hear crickets instead of the sound of my own breathing.

As I stare up at the sky, I realize that this is my favorite time of the day. The afternoon is ending. The sun isn't too bright and hot, but its still warm and the breeze is cool. Just perfect.

The clouds end up looking like cotton candy, and I just want to break off a piece and start chewing. I sometimes ask myself what flavor the clouds would be since they're white. I can't really think of anything that fits, so I just settle with vanilla. Vanilla cotton candy. That sounds nice.

The trees are the best part. When I don't have my glasses and am practically as blind as a bat, trees that are usually ordinary-looking end up looking like something from a fantasy world. They look like various shades of watercolor green dabbed into a canvas, darkly beautiful and more detailed than anything else. The leaves aren't individual leaves. They all end up looking like a part of a whole. When they start swaying to the wind, it becomes a fantastic view, like a painting come to life.

Sometimes, when I get lucky, I see trees with flowers on them, usually red or yellow. When I was a kid, I made up a story about them, the trees with flowers. I imagined that if a flower fell from one of the trees, you could make a wish and it'd come true in three days. It was stupid, but I was only five and crazy over Astroboy. I don't really know what the trees with flowers are called, but I think they're still beautiful anyway.

Sometimes, I dream of the trees with flowers, but then I soon hear a splash. My dream turns out to be a nightmare.