blogs

6 Reasons Why Blogging Is Awesome

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1—Because helpful strangers will take time out of their busy schedules to tweet or email you about the smallest typo you make and not even ask for credit.

2—Because other strangers are happily invested in your mental health and delighted to tell you that you should stop blogging forever since you’re obviously a narcissistic loon.

3—Because people feel free to diss whatever credentials you have and call you a hack when they don’t like your blog. We all need a dose of humility now and then, right?

4—Because someone’s always bound to completely misread your blog and respond to what you didn’t say, which shows you that everything in life is contingent.

5—Because what’s the point of meditating and getting centered if you don’t have people hassling you? Blog nimrods offer rich material to float away from.

6—Because if you write satire (or crime fiction) it’s always good to have new targets and victims.

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in many genres. His books and shorter works have been translated into 15 languages.

Falling in Love With Ghent

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The psychologist Otto Rank wrote that artists are perpetually in conflict with life.  They need seclusion to produce their work, but they also need to go out into the world for stimulation to create their art.

Whatever takes me away from home, I’m always receptive to possible locations for stories, essays, and books–and I return with lots of notes and photographs.  I was recently in Ghent, Belgium on a travel grant, liaising with officials from Ghent University to explore the possibility of a study abroad program with Michigan State University.  The city is widely called “a hidden gem.” It’s all that, and more.  Day after day I felt bombarded with impressions and ideas I knew would fuel my writing down the road.  I fell in love with a city I’d known almost nothing about, and fell hard.  Here’s why.

First there are the people. As my favorite author Henry James would have put it, “the note” of the city is friendliness. I got that vibe everywhere, whether in sandwich or coffee shops, stores, restaurants, and even from strangers who helped me when I got slightly lost. Some of them walked a short distance with me to make sure I was headed in the right direction.

As a writer, I seek comfort and quiet when I travel and the Carlton Hotel Gent was the epitome of those things. Family owned, boutique-style, it was smoothly run, ultra-quiet, close to the train station, served delicious breakfasts, and the owners were perfect guides to the city and its restaurants. The hip Café Parti was nearby and if could’ve eaten every lunch and dinner there, I would have. It served Belgian specialties that I’d sampled before in Brussels and Bruges, but they were exceptional, especially the stoofvlees, a beef stew made with dark beer, and the onglet, hanger steak better than any I’d had in the U.S.

I liked the modern lines of the hotel and the Café Parti (above) because Ghent has so much history in its architecture, from the Renaissance buildings along the canals, to the Romanesque St. Bavo Cathedral and the medieval Gravensteen fortress at the city center. Dipping in and out of these different periods was intensely enjoyable. And so was sampling my favorite Belgian chocolate, Neuhaus, and a Ghent specialty, neuzekes, candies filled with raspberry syrup that look like little pointed hats and are partly made with gum Arabic. They’re sensational.

Bikes are king in Ghent, or so they say, and it apparently has the largest bike-friendly zone in Europe. Ghent was the first city to designate a street as a “cycle street”—meaning that cars have to stay behind bikes. They’re everywhere, weaving through traffic and around the trams which snake along the sinuous streets which seem unlike any other street plan I’m familiar with from my previous years of visiting Western. There was something very calming about riding a tram or just watching one.

For a city which is the third largest port in Belgium, and has 250,000 residents, Ghent never felt overwhelming. It welcomed and fascinated me, and unlike the more famous Bruges half an hour away (which has twice as many tourists), it didn’t feel like a museum despite the amazing architecture from so many different periods.

Before I got there, I had plans to set a novel elsewhere in Flanders, but after this past week, the novel-in-progress has moved to Ghent.  Frankly, I wish I could, too.  For awhile, anyway….

Lev Raphael is the author of the memoir/travelogue My Germany and 24 other books in many genres. He speaks French, German, and some Dutch.

Don’t Diss Rihanna When You Blog

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The Internet is a breeding ground for hatred: look at what’s been happening to Leslie Jones.

But bloggers don’t usually deal with anything that severe.  What they do face is the lackwits. These people can be, but mostly they’re just critical and convinced of their wisdom when what they write to you proves the opposite. They hit the keys whenever a blogger dares to criticize anything or anyone they admire–and they have standard, boring lines of attack.

Say, for instance, that you’re not crazy about Rihanna or you do like her music but don’t think she was ready for a Video Vanguard Award.  You  don’t think her vids are classics and you don’t think she’s in a class with Madonna, Kanye, Brittany, and Beyoncé.  Expect to get accused of being jealous of RiRi’s success.

rihannaNow, unless you’re a pop singer, a charge like that doesn’t really make any sense.  But even if you were a singer, why would any kind of critique necessarily mean you’re jealous?  Can’t you have valid reasons for not admiring her body of work or thinking that maybe it’s too soon for her–at 28–to get the award?  Does that automatically make you a hater?

Lackwits have emailed me when I’ve blogged something remotely negative about a book, movie, or TV show, targeting me because I’m an author.

Back at the beginning of the latest season of Game of Thrones, I blogged that I thought Jon Snow’s resurrection was dull compared to other, more dramatic moments in other episodes. The inevitable response showed up: I was jealous of George R.R. Martin.  Oh, and guess what?  They had never heard of me.

A truly devastating comment.

frank side eyeAnd I just blogged about Michael Connelly’s New York Times review of Caleb Carr’s Surrender, New York, saying that the novel sounded unappealing as Connelly described it.  Of course someone felt she had to charge me with “sour grapes.”  Seriously?  I don’t write like either one of them, never have, never will, never wanted to, and never expected their kind of career.  .

Here’s the thing: Most authors aren’t on best seller lists and aren’t widely known. That’s the case even for writers like me who make a good living from their royalties, get sent on book tours at home and abroad, are paid very well for speaking engagements, win awards, and have successful careers.

Why’s that?  Because the average reader in America only reads or listens to one book a month and there are 80,000 published every year.  When people say that they’ve never heard of an author or charge an author with sour grapes because that person doesn’t like a book, all they do is waste an email and make themselves sound like a doofus.  Of course, they supply bloggers with material, and novelists, too….

hugh laurie

Lev Raphael is the author of the novel The German Money–which a Washington Post rave review compared to Kafka, John le Carré and Philip Roth–as well as 24 other books in many genres.

Blogging Brings Out Bitchery

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We all know how the Internet is a breeding ground for incivility and blatant hatred because you don’t have to face the person you’re insulting.

But there’s a lesser level of contempt that bloggers deal with when they cross an invisible line that brings out boors. These folks aren’t hateful, just sublimely convinced of their superiority.  They spring up whenever a blogger dares to even mildly criticize anything or anyone that’s popular.

Say, for instance, that you’re not crazy about Lemonade.  Blog about it and you can be damned sure that you’ll be accused by somebody of being jealous of Beyoncé’s success.

alx_beyonce-lemonade_originalNow, unless you’re a singer, a charge like that really makes no sense whatsoever.  But even if you were a singer, why would a critique necessarily mean that you’re jealous?  Can’t you have valid reasons for disliking one of her albums?  Or even her music in general?  Does that automatically make you a hater?

Boors have emerged whenever I’ve blogged something remotely critical about a book, movie, or TV show, targeting me because I’m an author.

I recently blogged that I thought Jon Snow’s resurrection on Game of Thrones was dull compared to other more dramatic moments in the first two episodes this season.  The inevitable response showed up from one reader: I’m jealous of George R.R. Martin and that person’s never heard of me.

That was truly devastating.

frank side eyeHere’s the thing.  Most authors aren’t on best seller lists and aren’t widely known.  Even writers like me who make a good living from their royalties, get sent on book tours at home and abroad, are paid well for speaking engagements, win awards, and have successful careers.

Why’s that?  Because the average reader in America reads or listens to only one book a month and there are 80,000 published every year.  Saying that you’ve never heard of an author is like a little kid whining “Nanny-nanny-poo-poo!”

hugh laurieSo if you’re a blogger worrying that your blogs don’t generate enough comments, there’s a major upside to that.  You’re not getting hateful remarks or mockery from people who think they’re smarter than you are–and feel the need to prove it with the weakest weapons they have.

BlogLev Raphael is the author of the novel The German Money–which a Washington Post rave review compared to Kafka, John le Carré and Philip Roth–as well as 24 other books in many genres.

The Secret to Get People Reading Your Blog

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So you’ve started your blog and there’s minimal traffic?

A sure-fire way to generate an audience is to write smack about somebody famous, especially if that celebrity just died.

Just see what would happen if you blogged that Prince’s music was over-rated, that he hadn’t really written any hits lately, that he was derivative, that he always looked like he got dressed in the dark–or whatever nastiness came to mind.  The comments would explode.

prince orangeIf you dissed Prince so soon after his death and all the memorials praising his genius, you’d be endlessly re-tweeted on Twitter. Now, people do respond to the 5 Ways to De-Clutter Your Sock Drawer blogs, but when a blogger targets somebody popular, it’s like swatting a bee hive with a bat.

You can do better than that, though: don’t just attack a person, attack a whole genre.  Look at Curtis Sittenfeld.  Never heard of her?  That’s true for lots of readers.  But she recently generated a ton of publicity by saying that most romance novels are badly written.

Bingo!  She got tons of press and widespread attacks by romance writers and readers.

Of course, she was after bigger game than blog readers because she was publishing an updated version of Pride and Prejudice which she thinks is a romance.  But the strategy could work just as well for you: diss a popular genre with a provocative blog title, and watch the comments mount.  Try writing a blog “Crime Fiction is Crap.”

The comments won’t be pretty. You’ll get dissed as a hack or moron or worse.  Ignore all that.  Ignore all the negatives, because what’s the point of getting into a conversation with someone who wants to insult you?  Just watch for the people who agree–because those people will show up, too.  And who knows, they might stick around….

BlogLev Raphael is author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in genres from mystery to memoir.

Blog Censorship

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I’m constantly finding blogs and even comments on blogs where people will use asterisks in this way: s**t or even sh*t.

You’ve seen it plenty of times, I’m sure–and it extends to other four-letter words, too. They’re partly printed, but letters are left out and replaced with one or more asterisks.

Is there anyone in the world who looks at those words and wonders what they mean? No. They read them for what the original speaker or writer actually meant.

So why cover up the reality? Who are we hiding from?

When you leave some letters out and fill them in with asterisks you’re not hiding anything. You’re just making your readers fill in the blanks and pronounce those words in their heads. Isn’t there something prudishly weird and hypocritical about that? Aren’t you in fact emphasizing those words, calling more attention to them, rather than the reverse?

Instead of using a few asterisks, why not eliminate the word entirely? Substitute asterisks or a blank line and make the reader guess what you wanted to write.

Which would create a carnival of profanity.

So that wouldn’t work either, would it?

Oh **** !

Head-smack

Lev Raphael is the author of the comic Nick Hoffman mystery series which you can find at Amazon along with his other books in genres from memoir to vampire fiction.

Blogging: Down and Dirty

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If you haven’t ever blogged before, you might not be sure what the response might be.  Usually, you just wait and wonder….

But when there is a response, and even if you haven’t written about anything controversial, be prepared for carping, quibbling, and inanity.  Because the Internet has made snark as popular as The Walking Dead, and you might sometimes feel like you’re being pursued by brain eaters.

When you blog, there are certain things that will happen for sure:

Someone will pounce on any typo or spelling error and TYPE THE CORRECTION LIKE THIS SO YOU CANT MISS IT.

Someone will ignore what you wrote and talk about their own boring or weird obsession.

Someone will channel a seventh grade teacher and hector you about a grammar myth like split infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions.

Someone will tell you that you meant “nauseated” not “nauseous”–and be dead wrong.

Someone will not remotely address anything you’ve said, but just attack you personally.

Someone will accuse you of not having read the book or watched the show/movie you’re writing about if you happen to spell any character’s name incorrectly.

Someone will completely miss the point if you write satire and excoriate you.

Someone will accuse you of relying on spell-checking alone and not having bothered to really edit.

Someone will call you a hater if you dare to criticize a favorite book, movie, TV show, celebrity–or anything at all.

Someone will twist one of your points and respond with a rant that’s two or three times longer than your entire blog.

Someone will accuse you of lacking a sense of humor, or conversely attack you for not taking things seriously enough.

Someone will sneeringly call you a hack, even if you’ve never written anything before and they don’t know what the word means.

The problem is, those people are often the only ones who take the time to comment. What is everybody else doing?

Blogging, of course.

So what about you?  What kinds of comments did you get on your blogs?  Do the types listed above ring true?  Can you add others?

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 other books in genres from memoir to mystery. You can find on Amazon here.