Something I’ve discovered in the past few days.<\/p>\n
There are bloggers who blog about my day job.<\/p>\n
Without being too specific, I write copy for a product catalog.<\/p>\n
We’re finishing up the March catalog in the next few days. My word count on the March catalog? 72k. That’s a novel. I wrote that in ten days.<\/p>\n
I bring this up, not for any “badge of honor” reasons. But just for some perspective. Insight, even.<\/p>\n
I have fans.<\/p>\n
Not of my fiction. But of my work on the catalog.<\/p>\n
One of my sister’s best friends is inordinately amazed. He wants my autograph.<\/p>\n
She told me about that. And my reaction, honestly, was one of stunned disbelief. If she’d told me that I had a second head growing from my neck, I’d have believed that more.<\/p>\n
But now I’ve discovered bloggers, blogging about my work on the catalog.<\/p>\n
That’s amazing to me.<\/p>\n
Oh, I’d seen my work from the catalog turn up on the Internet before. There was a news article that quoted an editorial feature I’d written, as if it were somehow authoritative, when in reality it was anything but<\/i>. And I’ve seen my product descriptions turn up from online retailers and on eBay. That one’s a little odd, to see my work on eBay.<\/p>\n
But to actually have my product descriptions connect<\/i>? That<\/i>‘s odd.<\/p>\n
See, I’m used to fan reactions for my fiction. Sometimes I’m surprised by it — like when I found a review written in Chinese. Sometimes I don’t know how to react to it. And sometimes I think it’s pretty nifty — like when a college professor wanted to tell me he was going to use one of my stories in his Sociology class.<\/p>\n
With fiction, you want<\/i> to connect with the reader.<\/p>\n
Blogging, too. You want<\/i> readers to come back. You hope your readers aren’t just drive-bys. Will the Cal State students reading my analysis of Rick Santorum’s Middle-Earth analogy<\/a> stick around? Don’t know. If they connect, maybe they will. Maybe they will.<\/p>\n But a product description?<\/p>\n It occurs to me, though. Of course<\/i> you want to connect with a product description. You want<\/i> the buyer to place an order for the product. You want<\/i> to make the product sound like the bestest thing ever. You want colors everywhere, she’s like a rainbow.<\/p>\n Wait. That’s the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the few blogs I’ve seen haven’t been dismissive of my work. Some incredulity at some of the things I’ve written in the past, maybe. But certainly no “You mean someone gets paid<\/i> to write this?” \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n Color me surprised that my work has merited notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Something I’ve discovered in the past few days. There are bloggers who blog about my day job. Without being too specific, I write copy for a product catalog. We’re finishing up the March catalog in the next few days. My word count on the March catalog? 72k. That’s a novel. I wrote that in tenContinue reading “On Reader Reactions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4124,4102],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-work","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}