Blogging Anxieties

Recently, I’ve reached out to a few authors about features on my blog. (Yeah, watch out for some cool posts coming up!) It’s really awesome and while I love doing it, it kinda terrifies me a lot. So, I thought I’d make a post talking about and maybe slip some advice in there. And I also thought about making this a series, since there will probably always be aspects of blogging that freak me out. And I’m sure other people might feel the same way?

So, I’ve written professional type emails before and I’ve gotten pretty decent with just hitting send on my ARC requests. Reaching out for blog features, for me, is a whole different story.

I second guess everything I want to say. I want to be polite as possible, but I don’t want to seem like a pushover and seem at least a little bit confident. A lot of thought goes into every word haha. Which I think can be beneficial, but I don’t want to slip into the realm of overthinking. I think that’s where problems could arise and my email could get muddled with extra words that I don’t need. It’s easy to say to just not overthink, but it’s harder to implement. So, if you’re struggling with this, I’m here to say “Your email rocks!”

If I’m doing an interview with an author, the questions are another thing that freak me out. I want them to be well thought out, relevant, and just good. I’m nervous about asking the wrong question or one that’s just bad. For me, I just think on them a lot. I think about the author’s book, what I’d like to know about it, what I think other people would like to know about it, and other stuff in that area. Another route is inspiration, writing process, and struggles. Googling author interviews is also a good idea to get the creative juices flowing and seeing what direction to take everything! I’ll also write down my questions in the notes app on my phone. After I’ll finished, I’ll sleep on them. This is a huge step for me, since I tend to want to send them off right away. But, my mindset sometimes changes overnight and I think of things I want to change or ways I could phrase something better. So, definitely give it some time from when you come up with questions and when you send them off!

Another good thing to remember is that these authors are human too. I tend to think of them as super cool people since they’ve usually written books I’m super excited about or books that I adore. My brain tends to go to “ah so cool super awesome book what are questions”. But they are just people too. I’ve heard an author say that they think bloggers are super cool and authors think they’re super awkward as well!

Also, always go through the contact route the author has specified. It’s usually all on their website!

This was a little more rambley than I thought it was going to be, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who is freaked out at the prospect of this haha.

Thank you for reading!