It’s no secret that the Internet loves certain things, with funny cat photos being maybe the most obvious example. A couple of other things that the Internet loves are lists and infographics. It makes sense; after all, there’s a lot to see on the Internet, and lists and infographics are good ways to pack a lot of information into easily-digestible portions. Most writers (and readers) also spend quite a bit of time on the Internet—we often like to call it “networking” or “research,” rather than “looking at funny cat pictures”—so there’s also a lot of stuff on the Internet that appeals to writers and readers. Which means that you can find plenty of lists and infographics about writing and the “writing life.” “20 Things Only a Writer Will Understand” or “10 Reasons to Date Someone Who Reads” or whatever.
Here’s the thing, though. There’s no such thing as the “writing life.” Or rather, there are a million different versions of it, all of which are equally valid. No two writers are going to have the same experiences, just as there is no one inviolable secret to breaking into publishing, and no one surefire writing process that works for everybody. Some writers write in the morning, before anyone else in the house rises. Some write after a long day of work. Some write full time while others find time to write sandwiched into a busy day. Some dream of the day when they can quit their non-writing job, while others would never quit, and find that their job empowers their writing in important ways. Some have offices at home, some write in coffee shops, and some write at the kitchen table, or in front of the TV, or in a nook tucked under the stairs. Some write every day, and some go weeks without setting down a word, only to knock out pages upon pages in a few hours.
The writing life is every bit as varied as the writers who live it, and while lists and infographics may be fun and often relatable, the fact is, if you’re a writer, then whatever you’re living is the writing life. There’s one thing that pretty much all writers have in common, though. Writers need readers (and vice versa). Without readers, writers are just talking to an empty room, and without writers, readers have nothing to read. So one of the key struggles of the writing life is to get writers and readers together. And like any other relationship, it’s not enough to throw people into a room and figure they’ll work it out. You have to get the right writers together with the right readers. That’s where the necessary evil of marketing comes in.
Like most every other aspect of the writing life, the kind of marketing that works for one writer may not work for another, but it’s always going to come down to one thing: making sure the readers who’re looking for your work can find it, and there are few better ways to do that than by having an appealing, functional website that can help pull in new readers and educate existing fans. Here at Clockpunk Studios, we specialize in websites for authors and publishers. So whatever your writing life looks like, we can help make sure it includes the website that it needs.