One thing drilled like an oil derrick into the head of an author — particularly someone ePublishing some or all of their work, like I will soon be — is the need to keep their blog updated on a regular basis. Of course this is part of attracting and retaining a following of regular readers, and associates in this business respect a blog providing meaningful content.

But beware the temptation to slip into a routine. Here’s how I drove away regular readers, at least until recently.

You should know, first, that I consider myself a solid writer, but not a great promoter (yet), so in some ways I can’t tell you successful ways to build that all-important community of fans (or as I call them, friends) that make an author’s social footprint so much more meaningful and effective.

But I can sure tell you what hasn’t worked!

So, my painful lesson learned: No one really cares about submissions updates.

No one really wants to hear about buying postage, or getting a form letter back from BIG PRO MAG, or your eyes glazing over while you send out submissions at 3AM, or what have you.

At least, not from mere mortals. And even then, only writers tend to care about a Big Name’s struggles getting work published, and then only as far as it went reminding them that writing is — like anything worth doing — a struggle, and that said Big Name was actually struggling at one point.

Sure, there are a few authors that leveraged the discussion of writing’s duller moments to grow a fanbase, such as Mur Lafferty, but I’d argue that even in her case the fan base grew from seeing her helm just about every job — paid or not — she could get in the speculative fiction community. She engaged.

Here’s how I pushed away engagement. I started posting a particular type of submissions update some years ago — one that just recounted my submissions statistics (go ahead, if you’re feeling masochistic, check out my “update” tag, or the tag cloud in the lower-right on this page; it’s probably prominent).

What I was really doing was not posting enough real, honest content because I was afraid it wouldn’t prove useful to the community, or my readers. I didn’t have the confidence in myself or my work to take those kinds of risks.

So I went with what was safe. And it was nothing more than insulation from meaningful content.

I mean, did you come here wanting to find out if I was 0 for 3 this week with submissions? An acceptance is great to report, but I think even a close-call letter should be kept to oneself. A blog is an interaction tool where you seek to mesh with your readers and excite them about your work. This is not the place for a dry status report. If you booked a coffee shop or convention hall to talk about your work…would you stand at a podium and recount for hours and hours how hard it was to get to said podium? Do they care about your difficult drive in all the traffic, or what is driving you?

Readers (and associates in the biz) aren’t looking for dry complaining from a podium: they want an open bar, and they want you approachable, and real — they want to come up and interact with you, folks.

They do this by finding your blog and then stepping through the doorway you’ve built called “meaningful content”. Writers, editors, and other folks in this business come to the blog to check up on Author J. Interesting and see what he’s really doing, what he is thinking, and if it’s meaningful.

Someone out there right now is shaking their head and wondering why I’m stating the obvious. Here’s why: it’s not so obvious to someone that’s starting out.

We’ve all been there, taking our first steps into this business. Writers are introverted by nature, and it sometimes causes us to second-guess ourselves — just like I did. So I post this for all, but in particular for those just getting started.

We could all use a reminder: status updates are as exciting for your readers as watching the moon on a cloudy night. They know there’s a glow out there, somewhere, but they can’t see it because the clouds are hiding it. So they go back inside.

Don’t send your readers back inside. Post content that really matters.

Stay tuned.