Tag Donevy Westphal

I’ve been writing publicly for close to fifteen years now and just published my first book (https://donevywestphalauthor.com/showcase/). Still searching for ways to improve, I keep reading about making my blog great and all sorts of tips and tricks on what readers are looking for.

I first began writing a blog entitled ‘Writing to Heal the Weary Soul’ https://deborawephraim.blogspot.com/, then I went to the Wix site—https://deborawephraim.wixsite.com/ and now I write here on my very own site.

Now, what I have found to be my biggest tip is that writing every day does indeed increase readership. But I have a real wrestle with the following rules. Here are some of those rules or tips and tricks—

Highlight tips and tricks

Tip number one: start with a killer title A subnote here, since I’m writing nearly 365 posts per year, writing 365 killer titles isn’t going to happen from my brain.

Number two: Start your blog post with a gripping first line. Subnote here, that isn’t as difficult as 365 killer titles. That may happen, but sometimes what is gripping to one reader may not be to another.

Highlight tip number three: Share relevant stories from the heart. I like to share stories, and I don’t know any of them not from my heart. The difficult part is giving a story that has a take away that can be recognized.

Number Four: Think “devotion” or “article,” not “diary.” Sometimes I do both. An author’s blog should be able to share the author and the author’s world. This point is difficult for me. I’m a farm wife, a mother, grandmother (or gramme to several), and even a great grandmother. My children have grown and left home, but not my heart. I have grandchildren who have grown and left their homes, but not our hearts. But I don’t share many things on my blog because this blog goes places I don’t want all of my family going. And they are too dear to me.

Highlight tip number five: Don’t write “stiff.” Write as if you are talking to a friend. Most days that’s how I write, yet, when I look at all the ‘rules’ on use fabulous words, unique words, but repeat keywords, and similes and… they all seem to want writers to fit into their box.

Highlight tip number six: If you have written “from the heart,” go back and see if your post follows a hidden outline. After many years of writing, I’ve noticed a tendency toward a conspiracy in my writing to sort of follow a pattern.

Highlight tip number seven: End with a bang—a takeaway that the reader will treasure… Note here: Don’t play with dynamite. And those are all tips and tricks to catch the reader.

The Takeaway

The original title comes from a gardening show which was popular a few years back, Tips, Tricks, and Tonics with Jerry Baker; if memory serves me (sometimes it does). Some readers may have followed me long enough to know that I do indeed garden and dabble in herbal tonics, poultices, and various and sundry old fashion housewifery practices, but not lately and not on my author blog.

Talent tips? Each writer has their own voice. I’ve had critics that have been rave reviews and I’ve had reviews that were less than kind. My grandmother used to have a saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Others when viewing another person’s choice of a mate have said, there’s no accounting for taste/preference. And talent is a combination of both. To some people, my writing may look like rambling, and to others, it may look like pure genius. Then there is the rest of the world.

Isaiah 42:

9)  Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.

10)  Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof.

11)  Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. 12)  Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands.

My daughter is working at collecting some of her possessions as she is preparing to move to her own residence. “Mom,” she says to me, “it’s a good thing you still have Benjamin. You’ll soon be almost an empty nester…”

For someone with a large family, that idea comes as an incredible shock. I had to stand back and look at where we were. In less than one year our daughter and her two brothers would be moving out, and within nine months the next son would be graduating, leaving only the five-year-old at home.

Oddly enough, if someone had told me then that it would take me seventeen years until I would have my book ready to publish I would probably have told them they were crazy. First off, because I didn’t have it started yet, only the glimmer of an idea, and second, of those who begin a book manuscript less than half finish them.

Yet, here we are looking at the culmination of the beginning of the end. We have come through many twists and turns, and the journey has not been smooth. I remember the first draft when I believed my ‘baby’ was done. I found an address of a popular publisher of Christian books, and with a cover letter I sent it in.

Needless to say, that began the journey, my ‘baby’ was nowhere near ready to face the world. My five-year-old son is now twenty-seven and on his own, and my seventeen-year-old ‘baby’ is about to graduate and launch into the world as well. We are target publishing “If I Should Die” by the end of May/beginning of June 2020. This will be the first in the Ebenezer series with at least two more novels, Lord willing, to follow.