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“What do you think of my website?”

It’s one of the questions I hear the most from authors, whether they write memoirs or mysteries.

I wish that my answer each and every time was, “It’s fantastic!”… but it isn’t. And more often than not, the problem is with the site’s blog. Oh, how I wish I had a wand to transfer every writer’s blog into a better author blog.

But let’s pause to distinguish between “blog” and “website,” because many people use them interchangeably.

When I say “blog,” I’m referring to a collection of online articles you add to your site on a regular basis in a section identified as your blog. Your website houses the blog as well as other pages – about, press room, books, contact, and so on. Your website is the home for your blog, and the blog is the tool you use to continually add new content to the site.

With that as the backdrop, here are three easy things you can do to improve the appearance, content, and visibility of your blog so it works hard to get – and keep – visitors to your website.

1. Break up the text with subheads and bullets.

Paragraph after paragraph of nothing but text is deadly for a blog because of the way we read online.

When you think of web writing, think of the “Idiot’s Guide” book series layout, with lots of subheads, call-outs, and boxed text. We need you to help our eyes by “chunking up” the text with subheads and, when appropriate, bullets or numbers.

When offering how-to steps, number them. Look for ways to use bullet points to break up dense text.

2. Always use at least one image in every post.

Quite simply, blog posts with images draw in more readers than blog posts without images. They add visual interest, provide the white space needed to give our eyes a rest, and break up the text. Make sure your images are relevant to the content, though. If there’s no connection, the image just confuses readers.

Popular image options include:

  • Photos
  • Screenshots (these help when you’re providing instructional content; I grab them with the free Jing software from TechSmith)
  • Logos
  • Product images

If your blog post is long and you can’t add visual variety with bullet points, add multiple images to break up the text so it’s less visually daunting. One study recommends one image for every 350 words of text.

Here’s how I did it in a recent epic post, “What should I send to my author e-mail list?”

3. Add social sharing icons visitors can use to share what they like.

Most of my social network updates are links to great content I’ve found on blogs. If it’s easy to share, I’ll share it. If it takes too much work, I won’t.

I recently came across a killer post that I wanted to share with several author groups on LinkedIn. Without essential sharing icons to help me do that quickly and easily, I had to copy the URL, use the LinkedIn search box to find each group one at a time, and paste the URL with related text into a “start a discussion” form in every group.

Oh wait … no I didn’t. I didn’t have time for all that.

Everybody loses out when you don’t make it easy for people to share your blog posts.

My blog uses a floating share bar on the far left. It stays with you as you scroll so that no matter where you are on an article, you can share a link to it with a variety of social networks. It’s generated by a WordPress plug-in called Social Widget, but Digg Digg and AddThis are other options.

A few resources

Here are a few resources that might help you continually improve your blog’s appearance and content. I refer to them often.

  • Problogger: Check out the helpful site content, subscribe to the newsletter, and bookmark the blog. You’ll get great information from a blogging Ninja.
  • Copyblogger: Subscribe to the blog; read up on past articles. While the blog is often about how to write well, there’s lots of information here that can help you improve the reader experience.

You’ve got great material on your blog. Now write a better author blog. Make sure you’re presenting it in a way that invites people to stay, read, and share.

A guest post

Three Stages of Writing a Memoir: Own Your Truth; Find Your Voice; Tell Your Story

In December 2011, I decided to take a trip to my home country, Azerbaijan. I had a property to sell and family to visit there. More importantly, I was on a mission to find my father’s grave. My parents were divorced when I was a mere two-week-old baby. I had never met him. Despite trying to heal this open wound for years, nothing helped. Perhaps finding his grave could bring some closure.

All I knew about my dad’s side of the family was that I had an auntie called Tahira who lived near the city centre of my hometown Ganja. On an impulse, I went knocking at people’s gates. Eventually, I found the right door. I was in for a surprise. Not only did my auntie receive me with open arms, I turned up at her 58th birthday celebration. Her four children, grandchildren, brothers and a legion of other relatives showered me with so much love, I returned to England transformed and healed. For days, I walked in the cloud of memories, and I soon decided I had to write it all up while it was still fresh in my memory. Once I started writing, there was no stopping me.

I’ve recently completed a draft manuscript about my experience of growing up in Azerbaijan. I am currently working on my next book.

For me, there are three distinct stages of writing a memoir, though not linear, stages in writing a memoir.

The Memoir Network

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG

1. Owning my truth

Owning my truth  has been the most healing stage in writing my memoir. To take full ownership of my life without making excuses for myself or others, or getting defensive, was truly liberating. To accept what had gone on for what it was set me free from carrying the burden of the past. By placing my memories on paper, I was able to view the events of my childhood more objectively and compassionately. It didn’t undo traumatic events, but I could now appreciate the adults’ side of the story too.

2. Finding my voice

It took me a while to learn to distinguish my authentic soul voice from the one which comes from my head or ego. They both sound like me but there is a big difference. My ego voice worries terribly about what readers might think, what details they may like or dislike, how my family may react, etc. My authentic voice could not care less. I know when that voice is in action. It starts in my belly and suddenly the material comes in one big whoosh and all I need to do is to type fast enough to keep up with it. I’ve noticed the difference in the level of engagement of my blog readers with my soul voice. The life stories I share on my blog are timely, relevant, and touch people more deeply.

3. Telling my story

Writing down memories is an important part of a memoir writing process. And there comes a point where crafting them into a story becomes essential. For a while, I struggled with the structure of my memoir, because it oscillated between a collection of short stories and a coherent book. It’s only when I became clear about the theme of my memoir, I was able to shape it into a story.

Writing a memoir has been a most empowering process in my life. The events of my childhood are now three-dimensional. I can empathise with my family members and see them more clearly for who they are. I have been able to access my authentic voice not only in writing, but also in my day-to-day life. Last, but not, least, I have been able to connect with my life purpose, which is to tell my story and hopefully to inspire change and give voice to women who may never be heard otherwise.

As part of my virtual book tour for the Memoir Writing Series, I made a stop at Kathy Pooler’s exceptional blog The Memoir Writer’s Journey. Do subscribe to it: it will serve you well as a tool to maintain the memoir conversation. This post is taken from Write to the End / Eight Strategies.

—

The Stalled Writer

An unfinished manuscript haunts a stalled writer, sapping energy that ought to go into more writing. Over the years of editing and coaching, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two sorts of people who do not finish their manuscripts.

  • Those who have been writing a good amount of text, which is accumulating without somehow coalescing into a book. The manuscript lacks dramatic arc and pacing. It is like a scarf being knitted without any sense of where it will end. So… the knitter knits and knits.
  • Those who have already composed 20, 30, or even 50 or more independent stories or vignettes and these, too, are not coalescing into a book. These writers produce stand-alone pieces, which is not a bad goal to have really, but writing a series of stand-alone pieces is not what they set out to do.

Writers in both groups of stalled writers want to make a statement about their lives as a whole—not to record in an ad hoc fashion interesting, unique and possibly weird events that may have happened to them.

To find help to finish writing your memoir, go to Write to the End, and use coupon code WTTE25 to save 25%

DL: As part of my virtual book tour for the Memoir Writing Series, I did a stop at Sonia Marsh’s blog. Below is a link to that post. Leave a comment and explore Sonia’s blog. You will find it full of interesting and useful posts.

A Memoir Can Be Hard to Write

—But You Can Do It!

Sometimes at the beginning of a workshop or of coaching relationship, people ask whether writing a memoir going to be hard.
The short—but possibly intimidating—answer is: “Yes, a memoir can be hard to write! The longer and more encouraging answer is: Yes, but you can do it!
Writing any long piece requires discipline and hours of commitment to the task. A memoir is no exception. You may have to learn skills you do not now possess. You may have to face a past you would rather not face. While your lifewriting may have these hard moments and others, it is important not to dwell on these when they occur.

to read more

DL: On a virtual book tour for my Memoir Network Writing Series, I was a guest of on Linda Austin’s fine writing blog. This post is excerpted from my second e-book in the series Start Your Memoir Right
This article will strengthen your resolve to write a memoir.

Should you write a memoir?

“Is a memoir worth the time to write?” I repeated—raising my voice into a question—when a man said Denis Ledouxto me at a conference where I was speaking that most people didn’t have a memoir that was worth their time to write. “Not only is every life worth writing about,” I countered, “but the writing of a memoir is a healing and developmental process for the writer.

to read more

DL: As part of a virtual book tour for the Memoir Network Writing Series, I did a stop at Sandra Beckwith’s informative buildbookbuzz.com blog.

Virtual book tour tips

As I explored options for marketing my Memoir Network Writing Series of six books, I kept hearing about the virtual book tour.

I was intrigued, but I was also intimidated. Could I pull off a virtual book tour? 

To read more…

Besame, besame mucho / Como si fuera esta noche la última vez…

Kiss me, kiss me a lot / As if tonight were the last time…

Cesaria Evora’s voice, strong and oh! so beautiful, comes in from the livingroom as I pour myself coffee in the kitchen. It is early morning, and I am thinking of my day, organizing it in my mind. There’s work at The Memoir Network—a ghostwriting client at 11, Sally who works with me in the office at 2—the gym this evening, a visit with my mother who is 93 and lives in a nursing home.

Washing over me

Then Cesaria Evora’s words really wash over me with a huge wave of feeling. La ultima vez! I will never dance again to Besame mucho with Martha. How much we loved that song, loved Cesaria Evora’s voice! Cesaria Evora was one of our standbys when we danced in the livingroom—practicing a new step we had seen another couple do or a step we felt we had gotten sloppy with. We were even known to dance in our livingroom just for fun!

As Cesaria Evora continues to sing and I continue to pour my coffee, I begin to weep. I am surprised in a way to be crying after six years—and I also feel it is perfectly normal. (I expect to cry for the rest of my life when I think of Martha!) I think of the last time Martha and I kissed. La ultima vez. Not the time right after she died, Zoe and Maxim and I surrounding her bed, telling her how much we loved her—“Martha, my love”—and I leaned over her to kiss her one last time. Then, impelled by an insatiable hunger, I reached over, and opened her eyes to see the blue one last time. But, she was not there. There was no Martha there behind those eyes. I was now alone—without my Martha, my love, at my side.

As I weep, I know there was one time that was the last time we kissed but I did not know it then even though I carried a heavy fear—it felt like a stone—that every time was the last time. By that last year, she was often weak and I was ever conscious of borrowed time.

Parts of our lives gone

When she was admitted to hospice and the doctor who examined her in her room said he would send the nurses in, I requested, “Leave us alone until I ask the nurses to come.” I got in bed with Martha, but there had been no kissing as I stretched next to her as I had thousands of time, thousands of nights. But she was too weak to interact with me and too much into another place of consciousness to do anything but lie quietly next to me. Being with her this way—one last time—was something, I realized, I needed to do for myself, for the years when I would continue to live with only the memory of her. I did not lie next to her again. That precious part of our lives together was gone.

Or, was the last time we kissed when we made love, gently, months earlier. A time that was strongly flavored with fear of its being the last time. Yes, that was a sort of last time but the real last time was months before when we didn’t suspect it was a last time. When we still thought that life might continue. In the intervening time, there had been lying together looking into each other’s eyes, knowing now that our lives, this life together, was ending and the awareness of la ultima vez was looming, always present.

At some point that we didn’t know—for me and I have to imagine for Martha, it certainly would have been too hard to know—that this or that time was la ultima vez…

Not la ultima vez I will weep…

As Cesaria Evora continues to sing, I continue to weep. I know that this time will not be la ultima vez that I weep for Martha—for me. That last time is for some future day whose date I do not know.

—

Have you written about your last times—about whatever it was you cherished? The memory of which you carry perhaps as a stone in your heart. Have you shared this story which is so you, so much of what you have become and are? Can you be understood apart from this story?

DL: The following article was posted on Nina Amir’s blog howtoblogabook.com as part of my virtual book tour for the Memoir Network Writing Series. I am now working on books three and four of the series.

If you have a blog and would be willing to host me, I would love to make a stop at your site.

What a blogged book needs

What could be an easier process to write a new book than to go to my Memoir Writers’ Blog, pullout some articles on the same topic, and put them together? After all, I had read How To Blog A Book by Nina Amir, a helpful book that inspired and guided me in the composition of my latest book in the Memoir Network Writing Series, How To Start To Write Your Memoir.

Getting Off to a Good Start

The Memoir Writer’s Blog had many informative posts about how to start the process of writing a memoir. I found, too, that I had many…

 

[to read more]

As I write this, it is winter here in Maine. Yesterday, I went ice skating and remembered so fondly many skating experiences in my life—especially my young life.

Here is a story of a day spend on the ice from a half century ago. For more stories about my high school years, click here.

—

One morning, when the sun promised to be bright and the sky clear, as we sat down to breakfast at refectory tables, on a day that seemed to be a day just like every other day in January, Father Guy would announce, “Aujourd’hui, c’est un congé de glace [Today, we are having an ice holiday].”

An ice holiday! A day liberated of classes. A day off to play.

In the First Form, we were taken by surprise. We had not known this was coming. It would be a day out on Silver Lake, Father Guy continued. The nuns would prepare sandwiches and thermos bottles of hot chocolate—he very carefully did not say “of hot Penobscot [River] water” but we knew what he meant.

After breakfast, we went to the locker room to change into our play clothes. Then, in a long line, the boys—130 or so of us by then—walked through the gate and down North Street with skates dangling off our hockey sticks that rested on our shoulders.

It was about a mile to the lake. (We thought nothing of walking a mile before beginning a day of exercise!) The lake was next to the road and, once there, we threw our hockey sticks and skates down and hastily slipped  into our skates. Soon, we were racing across the ice. The land around the lake rose only slightly so there were no towering hills around us. The line of vision was extended, and it was a pleasure to skate farther and farther out. After what seemed a long time, we arrived at the center of the lake and could see the pointed pines at the distance all around us. There seemed nothing to be done but to continue to the other end of the lake—since it was there to be reached!

All over the lake, we could see bands of boys skating. In the morning, we did not play hockey. That was for the afternoon. In the morning, we crossed the lake. When the sun had risen high in the sky,  it was time to return for lunch. Tired, already, we still had the whole lake to cross  again. At one point, we began to see the station wagon that had brought our lunch, the lunch the nuns had readied. The station wagon was parked on the road at the edge of the lake.

Once back, we devoured our sandwiches and gulped our hot Penobscot water and talked with each other about what we had done in the morning.

In the afternoon, some boys played hockey; while others did some free skating. Father Guy would organize  games: three-legged races, regular speed races, backwards races. Sometimes, we wandered off to skate by ourselves, but few ventured out to cross the lake again.

Then, at least an hour before dusk—that is, 3 o-clock, it was time to head back. Somewhat less energetically, we sat on the ice and removed the skates we had been wearing since that morning.

Exhausted, but exhilarated, we walked the mile back to the school.

The Memoir Network

3 Tips for a Better Author Blog

By on April 29, 2015

“What do you think of my website?” It’s one of the questions I hear the most from authors, whether they write memoirs or mysteries. I wish that my answer each and every time was, “It’s fantastic!”… but it isn’t. And more often than not, the problem is with the site’s blog. Oh, how I wish […]

The Memoir Network

3 Stages of Writing a Memoir

By on April 22, 2015

A guest post Three Stages of Writing a Memoir: Own Your Truth; Find Your Voice; Tell Your Story In December 2011, I decided to take a trip to my home country, Azerbaijan. I had a property to sell and family to visit there. More importantly, I was on a mission to find my father’s grave. […]

The Memoir Network

Is a Memoir Hard to Write—Yes, but You Can Do It!

By on March 16, 2015

A Memoir Can Be Hard to Write —But You Can Do It! Sometimes at the beginning of a workshop or of coaching relationship, people ask whether writing a memoir going to be hard. The short—but possibly intimidating—answer is: yes! The longer and more encouraging answer is: Yes, but you can do it!

Start Your Memoir Right

Is Your Memoir Worth the Time to Write?

By on March 13, 2015

“Worth the time to write?” I repeated—raising my voice into a question—when a man said Denis Ledouxto me at a conference where I was speaking that most people didn’t have a memoir that was worth their time to write. “Not only is every life worth writing about,” I countered, “but the writing of a memoir […]

Cancer diary entries

La Ultima Vez—The last time

By on February 26, 2015

Besame, besame mucho / Como si fuera esta noche la última vez… Kiss me, kiss me a lot / As if tonight were the last time… Cesaria Evora’s voice, strong and oh! so beautiful, comes in from the livingroom as I pour myself coffee in the kitchen. It is early morning, and I am thinking […]

learn how to continue writing to the end.

A Blogged Book Has to Be Greater than the Sum of Its Posts

By on February 19, 2015

What could be an easier process to write a new book than to go to my Memoir Writers’ Blog, pullout some articles on the same topic, and put them together? After all, I had read How To Blog Your Book by Nina Amir, a helpful book that inspired and guided me in the composition of […]

write your memoir

Another Bucksport Story—An Ice Holiday

By on January 16, 2015

One morning, when the sun promised to be bright and the sky clear, as we sat down to breakfast at refectory tables, on a day that seemed to be a day just like every other day in January, Father Guy would announce, “Aujourd’hui, c’est un congé de glace [Today, we are having an ice holiday].”