Running with My Hair on Fire

As you know, I've been writing like a mad woman for the past three years. Between the two kids, two jobs, two dogs, and now two books, I've averaged 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Every spare moment I've had has been dedicated to either writing or promoting. Over Christmas, my friends and family started voicing concerns that I was pushing myself too hard. After all, I'm not getting any younger. And so, begrudgingly, I agreed to slow down.

I've tried to take some time, to do something to "relax". I've slept until I woke naturally, suffered through mindless TV shows, and forced myself to go to social functions. I've window shopped until I'm blue in the face, and I've even lingered after meetings when I normally would be the first out the door. In short, this past month I've tried to live like a normal person.

I hate it.

Here's the thing: I'm an all-or-nothing kind of gal. I'm not productive when I move at a normal pace. I find that either I'm running with my hair on fire, or I'm a lethargic ball of humanity. Given the two options, I'd rather be running.

And so, I'm starting tonight. I'm turning off the blasted idiot box, I'm putting away the books I've read countless times, and I'm going back to Kailmeyra. I'll work well into the night and get up before the crack of dawn. I'll have leftovers for dinner, drink iced tea until I'm drowning in it, and get behind on the wash. I'll sit in silence, allowing the quiet to seep into my bones. I'll type until my back aches, and I am mentally exhausted ...  

And I'll love every minute of it.

The Evil Mr. HTML

Most of you that know me understand that I love to learn. I think it's the teacher in me, but when I discover something new it feels like Christmas morning.

That is, until I met my arch nemesis, Mr. HTML.

I took on the publishing industry like a mad woman. ISBN numbers, catalogs, royalties in various markets, marketing, along with the vast differences between formatting ebooks and that of standard soft covers ... yeah, I ate that for lunch. Why then is it so stinking hard to learn HTML?

Now for those of you that complain about blogspot, let me tell you I absolutely love blogspot. It's easy. There is very little in the way of learning coding and how it works. It's pretty much a click and drag, which is great for someone that works two jobs and writes in the wee hours of the morn. Wordpress ... ahhh, my head hurts even thinking about it.

It started a few years back when a dear friend of mine set up my site, which I adore. I thought she was going to use a standard wordpress format, but she surprised me with a gorgeous header and wonderful pages. I was thrilled beyond words. The problem is that I'm not exactly a genius when it comes to updating websites, and I have no clue how she did what she did. Thus began my battle with coding.

I've just spent the past five hours sitting in this chair looking at gibberish. I dropped a line of code on the sidebar somewhere and I can't figure out what I did wrong. As the slashes and dashes are starting to blur under the concentrated scrutiny, I'm giving it a rest for tonight.

Although the author site definitely is a work in progress, I'd love to know what you think. Any advise you  have would be greatly appreciated! :-)

What is SEO, anyway?

One year, two publishing companies, and three websites later, I still have no clue what I'm doing when it comes to the inner workings of the internet. Sure, I have two blogs, and two URL's (one that currently feeds into the other), but at the end of the day, I'm doing all that I know to do and still I'm not sure it's enough.

To quote ad nauseum, publishing is the wild west of the internet's new frontier. But technology can't replace humanity. People still long to feel valued, appreciated. While some have warned against becoming too close because writers tend to lose their mystique, that's just not my style. Tweet, email, message me in any form or fashion and I'll always try to correspond back within 24 hours. Why? Because it's important to me that people know how much I appreciate them taking their time to reach out and connect in some way.

I didn't get into writing to make money. Good thing, because apparently the majority of writers are poorer than Job's turkey. Some call it "sacrificing for the craft". I personally think it's because writers spend their precious time writing, not learning the in's and out's of marketing, which is intricate, complicated and flat out frustrating. I'm not complaining. It's an honor each day to sit down and develop a story that will hopefully challenge the way people perceive the world. But I'd be lying if I said that some part of me wouldn't mind making a living as a writer. I think everyone has that dream. Going down the hall to the office, still in pajamas. Writing all day, maybe coffee with a beta group, lunch with the girls at the literary society, and then back home to crank out another blockbuster. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Which brings us back to the subject at hand. SEO. I know it stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's a way to bring a site higher in the search engine rankings when people search for related terms.

What I don't know is why, as a writer, is this relevant to me?

For example, this month alone we had over 1700 unique visitors to the author site, with over 20,000 hits. I sit here grinning like a jack-ass eating briars, not having a clue what this means.  It is fascinating to say the least, but it's a lot like trying to read Chinese.

So I'm just going to ask. What is SEO, anyway, and should I be a little more aggressive in learning about it?