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Melissa Wiley is the author of eight Middle Grade novels for
children, all prequels to the Little House series: The Martha Years books about Laura Ingalls Wilder's
great-grandmother, Martha Morse Tucker, and The Charlotte Years books, about Laura's grandmother, Charlotte Tucker
Quiner. Melissa also runs two blogs, Here in the Bonny Glen and
The Lilting House.
Thank you, Melissa, for talking to The Edge of the Forest!
The Edge of the Forest: How does blogging fit with your writing? Do you find it adds to or detracts from your
creative life and writing?
Melissa Wiley: When I first began my blog, my goal was to save a bit of time in answering mail from my readers.
Many people write me with similar questions about my books and I thought it might be helpful to have them all in one place. What I found,
almost immediately, was a quite unexpected side benefit for my creative work. At that time, my usual writing shift was in
the late afternoons, after a full day with my children. I found that blogging helped me make that transition from intensive
(and fun) kid time to intensive (and hard) writing time: writing ABOUT my kids got the ink flowing, if you will, and that
made my shift from mom mode to writer mode less jarring. I'd write a post and then settle down to work on the novel in
progress.
After our newest baby was born, my work schedule shifted (especially now that my husband isn't a stay-at-home-writer
himself anymore). Now my work periods tend to be shorter, and I have to be careful not to let blogging eat up all my
writing time. There's definitely a give-and-take, a delicate balance. Reading book blogs keeps me revved up about my own
work. But I have to be careful not to spend TOO much time reading, or whoosh, my work time is over in a flash.
The Edge of the Forest: You run two blogs. One is about your writing, books and your family
(Here in the Bonny Glen) and the other, your new ClubMom blog
(The Lilting House), is about homeschooling. Why did you decide to run
two different blogs?
Bonny Glen had been perking along for over
a year when the ClubMom opportunity arose. I loved the idea of getting paid to do
the same kind of enjoyable work I'd been doing just for fun at
Bonny Glen, but also it seemed like a good
way to focus my topics somewhat. I'm still grappling with that end of it. I write about homeschooling, I write about babies,
I write about funny things my kids did or the medical issues my son has dealt with. But then I also write a lot about
children's books. Now, all this is very intertwined (in our family life and on the blogs), and I still wind up with a fair
amount of crossover. But it does help to have the The Lilting House to
really go into all the homeschooling nitty-gritty that a big chunk of my Bonny Glen audience isn't necessarily interested
in.
So in my mind it breaks down like this: Bonny Glen for children's
literature, Lilting House for home education—and then of course my
kids are running all over both blogs.
The Edge of the Forest: What about blogging has been surpising for you as a writer?
How it spills over into the rest of our lives: how it affects me as a mother and so completely interweaves these two
vocations of mine, mothering and writing. I find myself always on the lookout for the funny moments worth recording—and
I really think this has come to affect *how I react* to life's daily mishaps. No one wants to read about me snapping at my
kids. I certainly don't want to write about that; I don't want to LIVE it. So I find that I'm less likely to react
impatiently when something goes wrong, more likely to respond with humor, because there's a part of me that's thinking about
what kind of story this will make later.
I mean, as a writer you're always doing that. I think in narrative. But the blog is really the first time I've written about
my own life, as it's happening, and that awareness has made me conscious of my own actions, my attitudes and reactions.
It sounds strange, but I think that the knowledge that *I might blog about this later* helps me be the kind of mother I
want to be.
The Edge of the Forest: Has blogging helped you market your writing? Do you think your blog has raised your
profile as a writer?
It has definitely helped me build relationships with readers. I do think there were people who hadn't heard of the
Little House prequels—or had heard of them but thought they'd be cheesy ripoffs—who like my voice on the blog and
have sought out the books because of that.
I get a lot of mail from mothers who loved Little House as kids and are excited to know there are books about
Laura's ancestors, and I think the blog is responsible for many of those connections. People start following rabbit trails
online and wander onto a blog, and there's such a personal feel to a blog—it's so first person!—that it makes an
author seem *real* and approachable.
The Edge of the Forest: Do you have any advice for writers thinking about beginning a blog?
Well, just as I advise aspiring poets to read poetry, I'd say it's important to read other writers' blogs. You have to think
about tone and voice, how much of yourself you want to reveal. I think Gail
Gauthier is so great in this regard; she is
frank and real without ever seeming self-promotional. When she writes about her own books, you're delighted to be getting a
peek behind the scenes. And then she isn't afraid to say what she thinks about other people's books, but her criticism is
always respectful.
On a practical note, I like ProBlogger for advice about the logistics of blogging: how to use post titles that attract
search engine hits, how to use tags, etc. If one of a writer's goals in blogging is to connect with a wider audience, it
helps to know some of the ways to bring readers to your site. But I do think that stuff is secondary. An engaging voice, an
honest voice, is what draws readers. People want to know who you are, who is the person behind the book. The blogs I like
best are the blogs that tell stories—even with blogs that are more geared for information-sharing, the best ones are
those that give you a sense of the personality of the author.
Books by Melissa Wiley
The Martha Years
Little House in the Highlands. HarperTrophy, 1999. ISBN: 0-0644-0712-8.
The Far Side of the Loch. HarperTrophy, 2000. ISBN: 0-0644-0713-6.
Down to the Bonny Glen. HarperTrophy, 2001. ISBN: 0-0644-0714-4.
Beyond the Heather Hills. HarperTrophy, 2003. ISBN: 0-0644-0715-2.
The Charlotte Years
Little House by Boston Bay. HarperTrophy, 1999. ISBN: 0-0644-0737-3.
On Tide Mill Lane. HarperTrophy, 2001. ISBN: 0-0644-0738-1.
The Road from Roxbury. HarperTrophy, 2002. ISBN: 0-0644-0739-X.
Across the Puddingstone Dam. HarperTrophy, 2004. ISBN: 0-0602-7021-7.
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