{"id":4634,"date":"2011-05-13T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T06:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/?p=4634"},"modified":"2014-12-23T16:23:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T10:53:09","slug":"can-blogging-really-be-an-authors-best-friend-the-writerly-art-of-pollination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/can-blogging-really-be-an-authors-best-friend-the-writerly-art-of-pollination\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Blogging Really Be an Author\u2019s Best Friend? :: The Writerly Art of \u201cPollination\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Sue Hubbell (photograph by Scott Dine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Earth Day this year, Friday, April 22, I found myself reading a book about beekeeping, appropriately enough — given that bees pollinate flowers and, as a result, make the Earth fruitful. And so, that book (A Book of Bees<\/a><\/strong> by Sue Hubbell \u2013 pictured in her vintage bee-farming truck above, in a photograph by Scott Dine), became my Friday Reads tweet that week. (You know — the Twitter group where readers tweet what they\u2019re currently reading on Fridays, using the hashtag #FridayReads.)<\/p>\n

Getting Hooked<\/strong><\/p>\n

No doubt you wonder what beekeeping has to do with blogging, and how it could, in turn, be an author\u2019s best friend. The answer to that comes from the reason why I was reading a book about bees in the first place.<\/p>\n

And that reason is, I\u2019d just read the same author\u2019s wry and engaging book of essays about living on a ninety-acre farm in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. And I got hooked.<\/p>\n

So much so, that I wanted to get back into the world of those essays, which I\u2019d found as oddly uplifting as it was laugh-out-loud funny. It was Hubbell\u2019s first book of essays, which were originally newspaper articles (and which resembled nothing so much as blog posts) that \u201cpollinated\u201d my hunger to read more about the quirky world she\u2019d so skillfully created on the page \u2013 even if it came in the form of a book about raising bees.<\/p>\n

Blog Posts & Personal Essays<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sue Hubbell hadn\u2019t always been a published writer, nor had she always lived on a Missouri farm. In the 1970s, she quit her job as a librarian at an Ivy League university in New England, at the same time that her husband quit his job as a professor of electrical engineering. The Hubbells had been involved in the peace movement, and they wanted to drop out of a war-supporting economy to live a self-determined life, one surrounded by real nature \u2013 not just an occasional foray into a city park.<\/p>\n

It was their new rural adventure and the many calamities they faced which made their \u201cimmigration\u201d to the Ozarks so captivating — at least in Hubbell\u2019s artfully written essays. That and her discovery that she could earn much-needed income by writing articles for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/em> — and later on, The New York Times<\/em> and The New Yorker<\/em> — before ultimately becoming the author of eight books of nonfiction. (And though her books aren\u2019t about becoming a published author, they indirectly chronicle a writerly success story that writers of all kinds will find inspiring.)<\/p>\n

Blog Pollination <\/strong><\/p>\n

With that explained, here\u2019s the message that Sue Hubbell\u2019s essays so aptly embody: \u201cblog pollination\u201d can be a subtle but highly persuasive way for authors to cultivate an enthusiastic audience of readers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, just as Hubbell\u2019s essays (or her pre-blogging-era \u201cposts\u201d) so enchanted me with a wry, word-created world that I wanted to read any<\/em> other book she\u2019d written \u2013 so, too, can other talented writers-aspiring authors hook their readers with engaging blog posts, turning them into loyal fans who are eager to read any book they write.<\/p>\n

This is what every author needs most: loyal-fan readers who can\u2019t wait for the next book to appear. And who will, in the interim, content themselves with blog posts. Which are, after all, more and more likely to be the reason they became that author\u2019s fans in the first place.<\/p>\n

So that is what I learned by getting hooked on beekeeper Sue Hubbell\u2019s books: how the pollinating<\/em> effect of blogging can be an author\u2019s best friend.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve experienced the \u201cblog pollination\u201d phenomenon as a reader — or better yet, as an author — please share your story in the Comments section below. (Hilarious and uproarious \u201cMom Blogs\u201d are one example of the way blogging can pollinate readers so they can\u2019t help but buy those Mom bloggers\u2019 books. And you probably know lots of others . . .)<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Laurel Marshfield<\/strong> is a professional writer, developmental editor, and ghostwriter who helps authors shape, develop, and refine their book manuscripts for publication. She offers manuscript evaluation, developmental editing, co-writing, collaboration, ghostwriting, book coaching, and consultation for authors.
\nHer blogsite publishes inspiration and advice for the author\u2019s journey: Blue Horizon Communications<\/a> And her free eBook, available for newsletter signup (see the upper right-hand corner of her homepage) is titled: I Need to Be a Bestselling Author \u2013 Is That True?: The Five-Destination Roadmap to Authorship<\/strong>.
\nOn Twitter, you can find her at: @BookEditorLM<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield On Earth Day this year, Friday, April 22, I found myself reading a book about beekeeping, appropriately enough — given that bees pollinate flowers and, as a result, make the Earth fruitful. And so, that book (A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell \u2013 pictured in her vintage bee-farming truck above, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[353,3,720],"tags":[9,478,175,467,477],"class_list":["post-4634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbmtc","category-book-marketing","category-guest-posts","tag-authors","tag-blog-pollination","tag-blogging","tag-blogging-for-authors","tag-sue-hubbell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}