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By Jessie Mac.

I knew of Christina Katz's book Get Known Before The Book Deal (aff) months before I bought it.

Why did I take the plunge? Why buy it?

When I started my blog in March 2010 - it was for self-expression, self-motivation and to give myself a sense of accountability - the focus was mainly internal.

When people asked me about the publishing industry, I said I didn't know anything about it and that I purposely didn't want to know. The fear I had was if I read and found out how hard it was to get published, that fact alone would dishearten me and subconsciously stop me from trying.

Then something changed.

Someone I knew read my blog and called my writing 'solipsistic'.

Yeah, I had to look it up. This is the meaning from Dictionary.com

Well, when you ignore the outside for fear of it discouraging you, you end up focusing on the inside, the self. It made sense.

Of course I took it personally at the time but it was the best thing that could have happened.

It made me look outward. I started reading the blogs of writers, agents, publishers - anyone in the industry - voraciously to the point of information overload. I did what I feared. I found out how hard it was. I read and read. There seemed so much to do. The more I read, the more the list of things I needed to learn and do seemed never-ending.

How do you begin to tackle a piece of rope that doesn't seem to end?

I bought Christina Katz's book. Get Known Before The Book Deal (aff)

Here are the 3 Most Important Things I Learnt From It

1. A Fiction Writer with a Blog is Also Writing Non-fiction

When I read the book the very first time, I skimmed through the non-fiction bits thinking that it didn't apply to me. I wanted to write fiction. Non-fiction didn't interest me. 

 It wasn't until the second reading - to try and put a plan together - that it hit me. That as an aspiring novelist who has a blog that I try to update as often as I possible, could the blog be seen as non-fiction?

Why not? Writing about writing, marketing or films is not fiction.

It dawned on me that like it or not, I was writing non-fiction. Therefore, what she had to say about non-fiction writers I could apply to me and my blog.

Christina doesn't actually say that in the book but it made sense to me. 

To market your books, you've got to market your blog. Unless your blog is completely made up of examples of your fiction writing, as a fiction writer with a blog you have to see yourself as a non-fiction writer as well marketing non-fiction - your blog.

2. There Are Many Writers Out There With A Blog But Every Single Writer is Unique

When I started my blog and I read other writers' blogs – there were times when I felt frustrated and disheartened trying to figure out what to blog about.

Like many in my position, I wondered what I could write on my blog that would be different from what other writers were saying already.

Every other writer or aspiring author was writing about writing.

Why would anybody read me when I'm just starting out at step zero?

Who would want to know what a total beginner had to say?

These questions inevitably encouraged blogger's block and stopped me from blogging.

When you're starting out, reading other blogs can make you feel inadequate. You don't want to be solipsistic. You don't want to plagiarize and copy. You don't have enough experience to feel that you're qualified to say anything.

That where others had already built walls and had a roof over their heads, you didn't even have a brick.

Reading the book made me see that I had bricks from my life up until now but had thought the bricks irrelevant. And that made me more secure about where I stood and which direction my blog would go.

I am an actor. I was a teacher for 10 years. My educational background involved literature, marketing and business. I have experience.

The book helped me figure out what made me stand out – what made me unique – from the rest.

3. Focus - What I Write About, What Niche I Want to be Part of - All of Which Will Determine My Audience

I'm still learning from the book and still expanding on what I'm learning. For instance, when I started the blog, the most natural thing to write about was the writing process.

Christina's book made me look at where I wanted to focus. It made me question where I was before this point and how it was relevant to where I am now. And what I do now must reflect on where I want to go. Before and still a bit now, I threw my online net far and wide bringing in everyone and everything under 'writing'.

I'm not finished exploring that big net yet. I still want to read outside my genres e.g romance, YA, comics etc. But I'm beginning to focus more on what I'm interested in - adult fiction, SF/F and crime/mystery thrillers.

Am I glad I bought Get Known Before The Book Deal ?

You bet.

Why?

When you see the end of the rope - when you know the whole of what a writer's platform is - and of what is expected of you - you can then sit down and plan. And do what you can do. 

And everything you read outside of that is there to support those plans and anything different i.e. another way to promote yourself is an add-on, another option.

The book made me see bricks I already had to support the foundations I didn't know I already had; it helped overcome the information overload; it made me feel confident about what a writer's platform is enough to plan and start implementing it.

Guest post by the lovely and talented Jessie Mac. She is an aspiring novelist and an actress out of London. You can find out more about her by visiting www.jessiemac.com