Pages

I've seen a lot of writers' blogs over the course of the query researching, and it's caused me to ask a question I've wondered about many times - to excerpt, or not to excerpt? I don't feel the blog in any useful way reflects the voice of my writing - not because the subtler structure of language use is any different, but because the overarching imperatives of plot, setting, and character oh so SLIGHTLY affect the way usage comes across. A blog is so removed from the venue of a barbarian king in Late Antiquity (or the early medieval era, if you prefer - or even the dawn of the "Dark Ages" if you're that sort), nobody looking at me as a writer can possibly gain any sense of my authorial work from this form.

So - many writers excerpt.

The habit of excerpting regularly, in posts, doesn't impress me. It seems a very WIP thing to do, and if that works for some, great - but I prefer to keep my WIP in the custody of personally trusted readers, and I also really can't stand the whiff of "showing off" constant public editing seems to entail. More to the point, the first novel isn't properly "in progress" anymore (kids: WIP means work in progress), so ... yeah, but no. And finally, I don't favor the position of regretting throwing my supposed-work around if and when it doesn't work out for whatever reason. Yeep!

But I have been considering placing one static exemplar on its own page, lately. It's very hard to consider a scene to use - out of context, again, so much of my work doesn't lend itself well without footnotes and explanation as it were. Heh. But an idea has occurred to me; one of the very first scenes I wrote, actually, if not the very first one I put down. I know it was the formative core of my first concept of the novel (much changed, though this item did survive - with enormous editing done to it!).

We shall see.

But feedback on the point is welcome, too. The current idea under consideration is to put another page over there by "the author's bio" and "images" - to include one short scene, enough to give a sense, but not more than a couple minutes' read. Comments encouraged (and appreciated)!