Guest Post - Emily Paull on the Joys of Book Blogging

The delightful Emily Paull has agreed to do a guest post for us this weekend. If the quality of her blogging is an indication, it won't be too long before we're seeing her work displayed in the best bookshops. Thanks Emily. Hope you can get along to the Book Length Project Group sometime when work doesn't call you away.

Book Blogging: More than Just an Awesome Way to Get Free Books

by Emily Paull

I have been blogging now for about five years, and one of the things I have discovered is that you get about as much out of it as you put in.  In the early days of The Incredible Rambling Elimy, I made a point of blogging every Tuesday, even when I didn’t feel like I had anything to say.  It was just good to have that regular outlet… emphasis on the out.  I keep a journal, but nobody is ever supposed to read that.  I can write what I want.  Keeping a blog is different.  You have to think about your audience, in a sense, if you want people to come back and read your work again and again.  Yes, this is still true if the only people in that audience are your Grandparents.  (Hi guys!)

True, there have been moments when I should have just kept my mouth shut.  Anyone else remember that post in which I listed Stephenie Meyer among my idols because I was so amazed that all these teenage girls loved her so much?  Yeah…  But I think it was Foucault who said that ideas change, and it’s important that you learn and change your thinking over time.  By not deleting my Stephenie- loving drivel, I’m holding myself accountable to that.

But why book-blogging specifically?  Why is that so great for an emerging wrier to get involved in?

Well first of all, it’s fun.  I love to read, and I love to talk about what I’ve been reading, and having a book blog basically allows me to do this on a weekly basis.  It’s usually a labour of love, unless I am reviewing something that I just didn’t connect with, which happens, and is pretty much totally dependent on where my head is at.  You know, unless the writing is terrible.  Once I dropped the weekly format, I found myself at a loss for what to talk about for a while, and I thought ‘Well, what do I enjoy?  What am I good at?’ and the answer was reading. 

I stared in 2010 with a series of word vomit style rants called Thoughts On which was a way of collecting my thoughts about the books I had to read for uni.  There were a lot in that particular semester because I was doing two major literature units and I think I had to read seventeen books in twelve weeks, plus analysis.  At first, I was thinking that no one was going to want to read it, but I did it anyway because it was better than not blogging.  Then I remember getting a Facebook message from a friend of a friend who told me she was really keen to read Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer after reading what I’d said about it.  First thing I thought was ‘This is weird.’  The second was ‘I could get used to this.’  It was wonderful.

And I kept going from there, supplementing my own writing with blogging about the books I’d been reading.  One of the main things people say about learning to write is that you have to read a lot, and this practise really forces you to read critically.  You have to think about what makes you as a reader tick, and what works and what doesn’t.  Good writers borrow but great writers steal- and book bloggers learn how to borrow and steal by reviewing.  I’ve found this kind of blogging the most stimulating for me, because I am very conscious about blogging about my own writing.  Someone once said that a lot of modern writing is just navel gazing and I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want my author platform to be all about my writing life, because I’m not published yet, and I am pretty sure that most readers out there don’t care about me (yet), but book reviews are something my people (book reading people) care about and it connects me with the kinds of readers I hope will one day be interested in my book.  I do occasionally blog about my writing, and lately I have been blogging about reading and bookselling issues, but since last year, when I did an Honours thesis on Western Australian writing, and got my job at a bookstore, the reviewing has had a definite focus to it. 

Book blogging has also given me the confidence to approach authors and publishing types and say, “Hi, I’m Emily.  I’m a writer, a book blogger and a bookseller, and I’d love to chat.”  I hand them my business card, and sometimes they offer me books to review, sometimes I get an email address out of it, and sometimes these people even read the blog and leave a comment.  That feeling that the network is growing give me hope.  Maybe one day I’ll introduce myself to the person who will publish my book in this manner, but for now, we will have to wait and see.