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Wed, Nov 5, 2025

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Writing Blog Number 2

by S🤦‍♂️

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #2311764

This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC

This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario.

An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"

Feel free to comment and interact.

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Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

Schnujo

about an hour ago
In response to "20250122 Romance Tropes That Annoy Me"

Okay, here's the rest.

"Friends to lovers" had 18,872 searches last month.

Enemies to Lovers
Enemies to lovers dark romance - 23,580 (no, that number isn't a typo)
Dark enemies to lovers romance - 11,320
Enemies to lovers mafia - 9179
Enemies to lovers romance mafia - 8458
Enemies to lovers romance - 5929
Enemies to lovers mafia romance - 4113
Enemies to lovers hockey - 3778
Enemies to lovers fantasy - 2666
Enemies to lover - 2650
Enemies to lovers boss romance - 2213
Enemies to lovers hockey romance - 1610
Enemies to lovers dark rh romance - 1427 (rh is reverse harem)
Enemies to lovers urban fiction - 1190
Enemies to lovers comedy - 1175
Enemies to lovers grovel - 1137
Enemies to lovers - 1132 (note "friends to lovers" without the word "romance" on it didn't make the cut)
Enemies to lovers fae romance - 1071
Enemies to lovers reverse harem - 1014
Enemies to lovers comedy romance - 1002
Total - 84,644

[Visit the entry for more...]

Schnujo

about an hour ago
In response to "20250122 Romance Tropes That Annoy Me"

I think one of the reasons you see some of the tropes so often these days is because they are so popular with readers, even if they aren't popular with you. It can be frustrating if you don't love the mainstream stuff. But publishers and self-published authors tend to want to publish what the masses want.

Take enemies to lovers vs. friends to lovers. I know you previously said you prefer friends to lovers, S🤦‍♂️ and here you say you don't like enemies to lovers. In the past, I would have agreed with you and I agree that it isn't hard to do it poorly, for sure. But I only buy books rated 4.5 stars and above, so I guess that's part of what has turned my preference. Plus, I want to learn to write what people want to read. The other organization I joined highly recommends enemies to lovers and while you can write whatever you want, they will recommend against friends to lovers based on Amazon search volume.

I used Publisher Rocket for the numbers I'm about to give. I searched "enemies to lovers" and "friends to lovers" for the following information. I got approximately 135 results for enemies to lovers and 85 for friends to lovers. (I say approx. because I may have miscounted -- the 1st time, I got 136, but there were definitely a lot more for enemies to lovers.) This means people are searching for more things related to enemies to lovers to begin with. Some examples of more specific terms related to friends to lovers I found, just as a few examples, were friends to lovers sport, friends to lovers short romance, friends to lovers sally blakely, friends to lovers bwwm (this means black woman, white man), friends to lovers spicy, friends to lovers small town, friends to lovers pregnancy, friends to lovers hockey romance, friends to lovers curvy girl, friends to lovers regency romance, best friends to lovers, etc. There are similar examples from enemies to lovers, of course, but more since there are more searches.

But not only are there more searches on enemies to lovers, but the keywords we are allowed to use also get higher search volume on enemies to lovers. I say the ones we are allowed to use because I admit that if we could use "friends to lovers romance free," it does have a higher search volume than "enemies to lovers romance free." But we can't use the word "free" in our backend keywords, so on to the words we can use. Here is everything we can use in each list that has a search volume of over 1k (that isn't connected to an author's name or a book title). FYI, all these searches are on Kindle because, IMO, that's where most folks are reading books these days. Obviously, if I searched books or audiobooks there would be some difference in the results.

Friends to Lovers
Friends to lovers romance - 7618 (searches in the last month)
Friends to lovers small town - 3246
Friends to lover - 1876
A friends to lovers - 1636
Friend to lovers - 1209
Friends to lovers reverse harem - 1236
Childhood friends to lovers - 1038
Friends to lovers pregnancy - 1013
Total - 18,872

I ran out of space, so I'll have to finish on the next comment. lol But congratulations! I can check Amazon's searches for books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Your pen name came up in a search for both ebooks and audiobooks. NICE! Granted, it was less than 100 searches for each. (They don't give a specific number when less than 100.) But still, a search for your specific pen name is quite an accomplishment, IMO! Well done!

Schnujo

about 19 hours ago
In response to "20250127 List Of Bad Tropes"

Yep, Jayne is right. I had a friend with hair to her waist. She was cut from a very important program she had been working toward, so she cut her hair to the nape of her neck to signify being cut because she was really upset.

In the Army, I cut mine really short after an incident with a guy. And when I had my hair cut that short, as Jayne had mentioned people commenting, I also had comments about how I should let my hair grow out. Occasionally, those comments were even from guys that I should let it grow out so they could have something to hold on to. Mind you, these weren't my boyfriends. They were just drunk jerks who felt they should have a say over how long my hair is.

So, while it might seem overdone, from the women's perspective, it often actually signifies a metamorphosis in many women, a way to claim or reclaim power or to signify a big change in their life. We get it.

Schnujo

about 19 hours ago
In response to "20250217 Romance Tropes I Like"

It's funny that you like friends to lovers but don't like enemies to lovers. Enemies to lovers has a MUCH higher search volume. You do have to work at it to make it viable, though. And I can see why you don't like it. I used to not, but it's grown on me, especially when done well.

Schnujo

about 20 hours ago
In response to "20240715 Types of Fiction Writer"

I love how, at the top, you specify that when you mean fiction, you aren't talking about journalists or biographers, including autobiographers or memoirists. Sadly, I do feel like more and more of those are becoming fictionalized, including journalism. Too much of today's news is really just opinion dressed up like news. Annoying!

I feel like you've sort of left out a group of people who are like you, but in the self-publishing space. They don't share their work everywhere, no matter what. They have organized plans for social media, advertising, etc. They publish works that have been put through (often alpha and) beta readers and they work to get reviews. They have fans and followers. They work to hone their craft. They simply do it through the self-publishing space, treating their writing as a serious business because it is often how they make either legitimate side hustle money or a full-time income.

The coaches in the other program I joined are all required to have made at least $100k from Amazon KDP before they are even allowed to become a coach. That is openly stated as one of the requirements so we know the coaches know what they are doing. I saw a recent job post for the organization and that was included in the ad, though it was only for a part-time coach -- 10-15 hours a week. But given that everyone making $500/month or more is encouraged to post their Amazon KDP sales for the month to be entered in the drawing for $1000, I see how much some of the folks are making and quite a few are making $20k or more each month. During the summer, several folks were making over $30k/month, but that has dipped with the fall. Last month's biggest number was only $28k or $29k. Though these are student numbers, not coach numbers. We don't know what the coaches are making these days, but since one of the coaches said her newsletter has over 20k subscribers, I'm sure she's making bank!

They also recommend a pipeline method not available to traditionally published folks where each book recommends another book by the author. Since many traditionally published authors are published by different publishers, they won't be able to use this tactic. But it's how people with 20-30 published books get them all read, driving fans through their pipeline. I know I've fallen for it and appreciate the author making it so easy for me to find the next book by them. lol I think this is a tactic many self-published authors use to get more fans to read their books. Yes, you can list all your books in your books (and I plan to one day, assuming I every write anything lol) and you can have a website listing all your books (in case someone goes there), but also, too many choices can cause a lack of decision -- research proves this. Many self-published authors prove the pipeline works.

Anyway, I think you left out the serious self-published authors who are successful to varying degrees, care about their craft, and treat their writing like a business. No, this isn't me. At least not yet... lol

Schnujo

a day ago
In response to "20250611 Types Of Writer"

I guess I'm a gunner? I'm sure you find me annoying. lol My exceptionally long and detailed reviews suggest I'm a gunner. lol But I'm definitely sad NaNoWriMo shut down because it's the only time I ever got that far into novels and I did it several times. But I never did finish them. lol I'm always going to write...eventually. Though I haven't said I was going to do it now for a long time because I'm always in school these days. But I will later, eventually. lol

Being both an excited puppy and an accountant sound like a lot of work. lol I'm definitely not an introvert, though I do have works that I've either never shown anyone or only 1 or 2 people when they asked. I do have some things I've been working on on and off ever so slowly, but only vaguely here and there that IDK if I'll ever finish. Am I uncriticizable? (Please excuse the American spelling on your Aussie blog. Hahaha!) I like to think not? But no doubt, some might disagree. lol I do love when someone tells me they really connected to a character or plot. But I've also been known to send as much as 10k review credits (usually not quite so many, though) when someone pointed out something really important in a piece I wrote, either as something I did really wrong or a suggestion to really improve it, though not sure that last part would fully count as being uncriticizable. IDK.

Schnujo

a day ago
In response to "20240528 Author Website"

dogpack saving 4premium+, since he never answered your question, I'll give my 2 cents about when to start the website. I would say not to worry about it until after you publish. Otherwise, you can spend forever finding the right web host, choosing the best domain name, designing an amazing website, and now it's been 6 months and you haven't written anything. Plus, what are you going to put on it if you haven't published anything?

What many people don't realize is that unless you run ads or have a newsletter or have some other way to drive traffic to your book or website, except friends and family, almost no one will ever see them. So, there's no real danger of publishing a book and it not selling because you don't have a website. How would the website get traffic? There's millions of websites out there. How would someone find yours? (No offense. The same question would be directed at myself. lol) What's the purpose of the website? To drive traffic to the book? Then people need to be able to find it, which means you would need to run ads to it, which costs time and money and you need to educate yourself on running Google and/or Facebook ads. But you don't even have a book yet anyway.

I say focus on the book first. If you need to run ads anyway, run them directly to the book, not to the website until you have several books to sell. Though the other organization I am in actually says not to run ads until you have at least 3 books because you should be selling your book through your newsletter and saving your money because ads can get expensive. But millions of new books are published on Amazon each year. How will yours get seen? They recommend newsletters and not publishing anything until we have 1500 active subscribers so that's 1500 potential buyers. Not all will buy it, but some will. And we do newsletter swaps where we advertise other people's books in our newsletter and other people advertise our book in theirs so we have thousands of other potential buyers looking at our book. This is all free (except the subscriptions for the services -- I think I paid less than $300 for the year for both required services that work together in the system I'm describing, but that was last April so I might be remembering wrong).

Now, all that is for self-publishing. If you are getting traditionally published, I can't say as much about that. Maybe write the book, then create the website while you are looking for a publisher, but you still can't really put it on there since it will go through editorial changes and, or course, they will create the cover. They may even want some say over what your website looks like. IDK. Probably not, but maybe.

As for free websites, IDK. But be sure it has everything you want/need. In the beginning, you don't want/need much. But later, you may want/need to expand. Ensure that's a possibility, even if it's for a charge. Can you add more pages? Can you add a payment system? Can you add more pictures/data? Can you add a blog? Whatever.

Good luck!

Schnujo

a day ago
In response to "20240510 Writing Young Adult Fiction"

White Facebook may be here to stay, it's definitely not that popular among younger folks in the USA.

My friend's kid is 12 and doesn't have it. Even my other friend's sons, when we were discussing connecting on social media after she passed away when they were 19 and 21, they made fun of me for having Facebook and said Facebook was for old people. We didn't have any social media that intersected, so we just call and text. lol

There are some young people on Facebook. I saw the demographics on it when I was researching for a paper. Every age group uses it to some extent, but not many young people use it compared to older people.

Even just in 2022 and 2023 when my classmates from my master's program wanted to connect, they all asked for my "Insta." We all ended up connecting on LinkedIn (which the school required). Not one of them had Facebook. And they were getting their degree in gerontology. lol

So, while Facebook may be here to stay, at least in the USA, I wouldn't recommend mentioning it in contemporary YA fiction. Now, in the Falkland Islands, everyone uses it, including the young folks. They also use TikTok and other things, but Facebook is how the community stays connected, so everyone has a Facebook account. I still occasionally Facebook message with one of the kids I met there. He was 13 when we met.

I think it depends on the nation as to whether Facebook is thriving among the young people there.

Kåre เลียม Enga

Oct 22, 2025 at 4:00am
In response to "20251022 Pay For Play"

The problem... for us old geezers... is that the ground beneath us has shifted and feels a bit like quicksand.

1 Like

Amethyst Autumn Angel

Oct 22, 2025 at 1:17am
In response to "20251022 Pay For Play"

Ugh, I have a story waiting at AHMM. It's been sitting since May. I was surprised at their "open door" policy and wondered about the firehose of junk they must be getting. By the time they inform me, they might be charging for submissions! If so, I won't submit anything else. Thanks for the heads-up.

1 Like

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