It makes you think

I find it very interesting. Remember that it does not include you the subscribers, as you ‘hit’ every post, whether you read them all or not… It is a list of the top twelve viewed by people all over the world who are looking for something. Not surprisingly, the battles of Ypres and Krithia score well during this centenary; and my posts of them include maps, so that may help. Similarly, there are an awful lot of alumni of Trinity College out there, they have been told about Clare’s superb post on George the student, and evidently they have followed it up! One can also tell from the little flags that WordPress appends to hits that it is mainly Tahitians who investigate the link between George Calderon, Gauguin and Loti.

It all makes me think about what the blog has achieved, where it is going now, and what is its future.

Calderonia (the name invented by James Miles) was first mooted in 2013, when I had been writing the book for two years. Several people impressed upon me that I must increase George’s Web presence — at that time there wasn’t even a Wiki entry on him — and that a regular blog would help achieve that. You only have to read the recent Comment by Lord Strathcarron, chairman of Unicorn Publishing Group, to see they were right about its ‘marketing’ value. There is no doubt in my mind that Calderonia is responsible for a large part of my comparative success in approaching publishers.

Although I could see the sense of what people were telling me in 2013, I was rather wary at first as I couldn’t see how I was going to present the blog; to be blunter, what I was going to write about. It was the enormous interest in the centenary of August 1914 that simply drove me to the ‘blography’ of George’s (and Kittie’s) first year of the war, i.e. posting almost every day about that until George fell at Gallipolli and 30 July had come full circle. I am proud of having got through that year of blography, but it was so eviscerating at times and such hard work that I was ready to stop there.

But again numerous pragmatic friends, notably Andrew Tatham, author of  the wonderful groupphoto.co.uk, told me I would be mad to give up and waste all that marketing potential for finding a publisher and selling copies, especially if I found no commercial publisher and had to self-publish… I hastily took their advice.

In fact, as followers will appreciate, I have found plenty to write about since July 2015, and I have enjoyed it immensely, despite the fact that it has been a quite different experience from ‘1914-15’ when I was living the war from day to day, two-timing writing the blog and the last chapters of the book, and doing goodness knows what else. But it’s now time to ask again where the blog is going and what it’s brought me.

I have written over a quarter of a million words. I have never written so much in three years in my life before. It’s been exceedingly liberating, because I could write about what I liked, and that’s still a major attraction. But…there has to be more to life and letters than marketing? I don’t have anything against journalism; in fact I have an enormous respect and admiration for journalists, their economy with words, the quality of much of their writing, and their ability as professionals to do it perfectly even when they don’t want to. The blog is the nearest I shall ever come to journalism, however, and it’s not my forte. I fear that the blog has had a deleterious effect on my own prose, especially as the social media encourage you to emote onto the screen without exercising proper rational, aesthetic and editorial control. In the last three years, whilst I have been simultaneously finishing George Calderon: Edwardian Genius and composing the blog, I have written nothing else, excepting about three haikus!

Yet I think there are still things I will want to put down on blog-screen, there are still issues with improving the book, with finding the best publisher and doing the deal, and above all there will still be themes and new discoveries about George and Kittie, which I hope followers will still be interested to read about and perhaps (please) Comment on. And that’s quite independent of marketing.

So, unless there is a wave of emails telling me in the kindest possible terms to call it a day, I shall soldier on, with roughly a post a week, until publication day. Is that reasonable? Should one discuss reviews? In the theatre, you are advised to pretend you haven’t even read them. At the moment, I am thinking of a final image of the cover and announcement informing everyone how to buy the book, of always replying of course to comments, but taking a rest then for a year or two until I (might) start up a different blog altogether.