Tom Dolby's Dolblog
Posted on July 12, 2005
Tom Dolby, the author of the bestseller The Trouble Boy (Kensington Books), discusses blogging and author blogs in an article in the San Fransico Chronicle. Dolby says he has a blog, called Dolbog, but he says it is more of a news page and not like some other author blogs:
I currently have a news page, but it's not a real blog in the sense of running daily musings on the inner life of a writer. My faux-blog -- the guy who designed my site calls it the "Dolblog," a nickname I may formally adopt someday -- is the ultimate in self-aggrandizement, something I am the first to admit. It notes bookstore appearances, mentions in the press, and funny experiences I've had while promoting my novel. It's not like other authors' blogs, in which they reveal their insecurities, their slights, the fact that their partners are angry at them. Through their blogs, many of which are updated daily, these authors are able to grow and cultivate an audience between books.Dolby, who has done a book tour blog and guest blogged at The Elegant Variation, has concerns that if he started blogging regularly it might take something away his other work. He also wonders if blogs had existed many years ago would authors have discussed personal issues like their divorces and concerns about publication? However, he does think blogging is a fantastic way for today's unpublished writers to get noticed by an agent or publisher.
When I told my mother about the Virtual Book Tour, she said to me, "You won't start a blog, will you? I wouldn't want you to write anything too personal!" Unfortunately, the jig is already up, and she knows it. As an author who works in a confessional vein, I believe that writing is the art of telling secrets. I find no shame in it; while not all of my work is autobiographical, I have no problem with using some of my life's stories as inspiration. A portion of what I write about in my fiction and nonfiction is material that could also be covered in a blog. Yet were I to start blogging, whatever the benefits might be -- increased visibility for my books, that sense of instant cyberspace gratification -- I'm not certain what the damage would be to my other work.Imagine, for a moment, if blogs were not a recent phenomenon: Would Philip Roth have blogged about his divorces? Would J.D. Salinger have posted entries about his reluctance to publish again? I was asked recently, "If you're a real writer, do you blog?" Absolutely, if you want to. I think someday bloggers will be recognized, server space permitting, as the great chroniclers of our time, joining serial scribes like Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, Herb Caen and Armistead Maupin. For unpublished writers, blogging is a fantastic -- arguably, the best -- way to get noticed by an agent or publisher and get a book deal. But I wonder how many published or even unpublished writers would do better to spend less time blogging and more time working on their books.