{"id":5933,"date":"2013-08-24T20:59:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T02:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5933"},"modified":"2013-08-24T20:59:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T02:59:38","slug":"please-dont-blog-your-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5933","title":{"rendered":"“Please Don’t Blog Your Book”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an interesting post by Anne Hill, chock full o’ links, called “How to Blog and When Not to Blog<\/a>,” I was led to this one by Jane Friedman, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In other words, most plans for turning blog posts into books do not work. A few have. There might be a few exceptions, she suggests, such as self-help topics. If it’s going to work, she says, you have to be “laser-focused.”<\/p>\n

Not me. No lasers here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an interesting post by Anne Hill, chock full o’ links, called “How to Blog and When Not to Blog,” I was led to this one by Jane Friedman, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book.” In other words, most plans for turning blog posts into books do not work. A few have. There might be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1xH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=986","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":0},"title":"After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.He was older, charming,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0919345174","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14029,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14029","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":1},"title":"Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props \u2013\u00a078 of them, to be precise. I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Tarot\"","block_context":{"text":"Tarot","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=tarot"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/eden-gray-doctor-x.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6062,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6062","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":2},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: Where You Find an Eagle Eating a Snake . . .","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 After reading this article, I think I will write something for Fate magazine about how Tenochtitlan was really a Mexica overlay on a forgotten Roman colony. Should be good for a few chuckles. \u00b6 After a long hiatus (in comic book years), Asterix the Gaul returns. \u00b6 An old\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":42,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=42","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":3},"title":"The ‘Bast’ Mysteries","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 22, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently bought Bell, Book, and Murder, the 3-in-1 edition of Rosemary Edghill's \"Bast\" mysteries: three short mystery novels set in 1990s Manhattan whose protagonist is Karen Hightower (Craft name \"Bast\"), a thirty-something graphic designer. Her design business is called High Tor Graphics, both a pun on her name and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8366","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":4},"title":"Thinking How the Tarot Smuggled Paganism to the Present","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my twenties, the Tarot was about the most \"occult\" thing around that I could bring out in public settings. I learned to read the cards semi-competently and had some adventures thereby. When I made it through an evening of reading for casual strangers in a nightclub, I figured that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0715645722","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12750,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12750","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":5},"title":"The Making of an Ethnobotanist in a 1960s University Scene","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 23, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the books on my ethnobotany shelves is Witchcraft Medicine:Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, a colloboration between Wolf Dieter Storl, Claudia M\u00fcller-Ebeling, and Christian R\u00e4tsch, all three anthropologists and ethnobotanists. M\u00fcller-Ebeling and R\u00e4tsch are married and live in Hamburg, but Storl was born in Germany in 1942\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/storl.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5934,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions\/5934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}