From blog to stack

The past and present of writing online

Today I had a reason to dive into my old Wordpress blog, Charlotte’s Web. I needed to do some research into book launch events I’d held in South Africa in 2014 for my first novel Balthasar’s Gift. My current publisher’s marketing manager needed some social proof that I have a good network in SA to build a commercial case for making my books available there. I knew I’d had a series of events, but I couldn’t remember the details.

What I found, lovingly documented, was that I held four launch events in 2014 - one in my hometown of Pietermaritzburg, and one each in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. At each event I had a brilliant emcee who did a Q&A - the wonderful Professor Cheryl Stobie (a former teacher of mine) in PMB, my film-maker and novelist cousin Sam Wilson in Cape Town, the curmudgeonly but kind columnist William Saunderson-Meyer in Durban, and prolific novelist (and now podcaster) Fiona Snyckers in Joburg. I was also able to show that my books had several South African reviews, from large daily newspapers to local litmags.

Screengrab from Charlotte’s Web. Pic features me looking a lot younger, with Prof Stobie looking very relaxed, on a red leather sofa in the cafe of the Tatham Art Gallery in downtown Pietermaritzburg

I wrote Charlotte’s Web for 10 years, and it had over 500,000 views, which made it a medium-sized blog. Apart from being a library where I can now research my life, it created inordinate value for me.

Here’s are some of the wonderful and surprising things that came from writing online:

Friendships

I made a lot of blogging friends, some of whom are good friends to this day, and many others I’m still connected to through LinkedIn and Instagram. We had once had a blog meet-up in New York. My mother was very scared about me meeting people off the internet.

One friend in particular is Lia Hadley, who has been a beta reader for all three of my books. Lia and I have been on holiday together several times, meet a couple of times a month for a chat, and have supported each other through life’s highs and lows. Lia is about to embark on an amazing adventure, taking a trip on a container ship from Rotterdam to Baffin Island and then down one of the American coasts. A lifelong sailor, and ballerina turned engineer, Lia never ceases to amaze and surprise me.

One blog that I followed assiduously was that of Cooksister, run by fellow South African expat Jeanne. Jeanne and I once had lunch when we were both visiting SA and she recently came to the London launch of We Need New Leaders.

When one of my kids was looking up the recipe for South African beer bread that I used to make when she was a child, she found the recipe that I always used on Cooksister - and a comment from me about how I going to try it. So meta, so fun.

A job

I landed my executive communications gig at SAP because I’d become adept at the then nascent social media - blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. At the time, people were starting to realise that executives needed a social media presence but they had no idea how to get started. I got the gig helping execs navigate this new world, and unintentionally ended up running executive communications globally at the company.

Two books

Writing the blog led to writing the books. I gained confidence in my voice. I wrote a post called I Am From (not original; I was jumping on a trend) and someone said to me, ‘I’d read a book about about this.’ When I decided I was serious about writing a book, and actually started the writing and not just the talking about it, I followed other bloggers in the literary world. One was a literary agent called Nathan Bransford. Nathan held a competition called the Suprisingly Essential First Page Challenge in which he’d offer a contract to represent the book to the winner. There were 645 entries and my first page was one of the six finalists. I didn’t win overall but it helped me keep going. When the first draft was finished I collected my prize from Nathan - a query critique, which was also very helpful.

The reason I know all this? I documented the whole process of writing the book, from the writing to the rewriting to the finding an agent to the rewriting some more to landing two publishing deals, in the blog. What could be a vague and happy blur is now a record.

From then to now

Social media has grown a lot more visual and is strongly oriented towards video. But thanks to first Medium and now Substack, blogging remains. It’s just called writing now. RSS feeds are dead, and we reach our readers via a subscription email. But the world of writing for a dedicated group of readers still exists and I’m grateful for that.

Having spent a few hours toggling through Charlotte’s Web, I do see the personal value of writing online - it’s more than a legacy; it’s a window into where my brain was then, what I was thinking about, what interested me. Also, I’m funny. I made myself laugh.

As I move out of book marketing mode later this summer, I’ll be writing here more often. I’m taking a more lassez-faire attitude to the writing, so you might find some reviews of what I’m reading or more personal posts.

Hope you’ll enjoy it.