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Blog Fatigue

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I was lamenting on Twitter yesterday that I don’t know if anyone actually reads my blog, and it seems people do, even if they’re not commenting, so I guess I’ll keep up with it. My problem right now is that I have no idea what to write about. I haven’t been watching much TV or movies, so I don’t have anything to discuss there. I’ve been reading from my to-be-read pile, and I’m finding that there are reasons I didn’t read those books for so long, so I haven’t had a lot of books to recommend. Otherwise, my reading is for research for a future project, and I don’t really want to talk about what I’m reading there because the idea is that I’ll throw all that information into the mental blender, and what comes out won’t be recognizable from the source. But if I tell people what the sources are, they’ll be looking for chunks in the smoothie that they can identify, and that may lead to them misinterpreting the book.

I don’t really have a life outside the house now because I only go out to go grocery shopping. There’s no choir, no children’s choir, no getting together with friends. It’s too hot to go out hiking. Basically, I spend my days writing and researching, listening to classical music, and cooking. I don’t have much to say about the music because the very point of it is that I don’t think about it. I can just listen and let it flow over me, and sometimes that’s the only time when I don’t have words swirling around in my head.

So I’m not sure what to talk about. What do you want to hear? This is your chance to ask questions, and the answers may turn into a blog post. Ask me about the writing process or the publishing business. Do you have questions about how to write a book or get it published? Or ask about my books, where ideas came from, some of my research, etc. (though, to be honest, it’s been so long since I wrote a lot of my books that I might not remember anymore). Anything else?

I may take the rest of August as a kind of holiday to stockpile ideas and have something more substantial to say when I start up again in September. To keep up with me otherwise, follow me on Twitter. I mostly put book info on Facebook. Or there’s my mailing list.

9 Responses to “Blog Fatigue”

  1. Mary Noble

    I just read Enchanted, Inc. and I loved it! Getting the next book. I work in a library and love to recommend books to people. Yours will be one of them! If you would like to email thru my email and kind of pen pal it I’m game!

    • Shanna Swendson

      Thanks! As for a pen pal, the idea is lovely, but I barely manage to stay in touch with my parents, these days. I need to spend my writing time and energy on books.

  2. Ananya

    I am one of those people who reads your blog regularly, but doesn’t usually comment. As a teenager who loves writing, I really like hearing about whatever you have to say, especially little tidbits about your writing process. In terms of more specific questions though, I would love to hear about how you came up with the idea for Rebel Mechanics, which is one of my favorite book series! Also, I remember some time ago you mentioned something about how you were waiting to get the rights to your first book before you published the fourth one; do you think that will happen anytime soon? Is there anything we as readers can be doing to help get a fourth Rebel Mechanics book published? I am several years older now than I was when I started reading those books, but I don’t think I will ever outgrow them 🙂

    • Shanna Swendson

      I don’t know that there’s anything readers can do to help because getting the publisher to do something would take thousands of additional sales, so that would take a huge push. Otherwise, I need sales to drop so I can get those rights back. I’ll see in October how close I’m getting, but right now, unless a reader push could be really, really huge, it would only hurt the cause right now.

  3. Jodi Fitzpatrick

    I am also a regular ready who rarely comments. I have a craft or publishing question. Do you copy edit your own work? I believe you mentioned you reread your book aloud to catch mistakes? I have some brain trauma issues and find I misspell a lot without knowing it now. Would you recommend a pro copy editor before submitting a manuscript?

    • Shanna Swendson

      If you’re submitting to agents or traditional publishers, you generally don’t need to hire your own editor because a publisher will have copyeditors and proofreaders. However, if you have an issue with spelling such that it might work against you in getting an agent or publisher in the first place, then getting some editing assistance might be a good idea. That could even just be a friend whose judgment you trust to give your work a second look. A copyeditor does a lot more than just looking for misspelled words. They check for style issues for consistency, and there’s no point in doing that level of edit before submitting, since each publisher has their own style rules (situations where there are multiple “right” ways of doing something, and they pick which one they’re using).

  4. Chelsea

    I have finished you Rebel Mechanics series and am hoping for another to conclude the story! I need to know what happens to Henry and Verity:)

  5. Holly

    Just a thought – but you might get more comments if they weren’t disabled after a certain amount of time. I looked back and all the previous posts show comments disabled. It’s only been a month or two and you already can’t comment. Not everyone reads blogs on the daily but might like to check up on their favorite authors from time to time and comment.

    As an aside – I had no idea you even had a blog. Which is crazy because I’ve been to your website many times over the years, albeit on my cell phone. I’ll have to check out if the layout is different and that’s why I didn’t notice?

    You have been one of my favorite authors for about a decade! I’ve recommended your books so often in the Enchanted, Inc series. I have them in print and on Audible. I re-read or re-listen every year to them all. You just can’t get that level of humor, creativity, and smart/capable heroine just anywhere. And clean! No need to censor around people. I agree with your posts about a lack of good novels that have a light fantasy element. Any that I’ve found have always been more risque than I prefer and that ruins it for me.

    I love all your books though and am just reading the 3rd Rebels book for the first time. I cam on to find out if there was more info on Henry/Verity and found your blog. Thank you (on behalf of myself and those I’ve shared your worlds with) for years worth of entertainment.

    You are the best!

    • Shanna Swendson

      I had to disable comments for older posts because I was being swamped with spam. It was like the spam bots found old posts and started flooding them with comments. It was taking me a good chunk of time every day just to delete them, and some of them were really gross and disturbing to see even just long enough to delete them, so I disabled comments for posts older than two weeks, and that drastically cut the spam. Since I seldom get comments even on newer posts, it was a cost/benefit assessment. I may move that to a month out and see what happens.

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