Writers, whether they are real or pretend (like I am), are supposed to say Yes. @ProcrastWriter (if you’re any sort of writer you must follow Jennifer Blanchard on twitter and read her helpful blog) retweeted this article a couple days ago. I read it in full agreement.
Until Saturday’s undisciplined morning.
With one full day of rest and thought between me and Saturday’s debacle, I thought about the dilemma – to blog or not to blog. I thought long and hard about blogging and writing and modern writers.
photo: http://www.despair.com - for all your demotivational needs
Christopher Moore has a blog. He writes about everything, though very rarely.
Annie Proulx does not have a blog.
Steven Pressfield does more than blog. He helps make other people into a version of Bagger Vance on his blog. This guy is busy, and I should add, he is generous.
Cormac McCarthy does not maintain a weblog from the Mexican border, nor from the road.
Of course, Dave Berry does; and naturally Annie Dillard does not have time to blog. She is, as it were, gathering preying mantis egg sacs and watching them with primordial fascination.
He speaks:
-James Frey. Does. Not Blog.
Authors who need no links to their blogs, as their books are the results of their online dominance include: Seth Godin, Chris Guillebeau, the almighty Dooce and Darren Rowse. For these bloggers, blogging is writing.
But what about us amateurs?
Blogging is a time-suck into a fictional world where advertisers award easy money to everyone with a WordPress account.
The problem with blogging for authors and would-be authors is the extra blank screen. Writers face enough that is blank. Bank account, that post-morning headspace, the three notebook pages you left to finish the rough draft of that last short story.
The screen on your blog’s dashboard has some handy doo-dads, but the center portion where the text is supposed to go, is always blank. Like your current notebook. Like your word-processing screen.
Always blank.
The discipline to write every day becomes a curse, because writers, even us pretend writers, learn to fill things that are blank; not the bank account of course, but the pages and the screen and the seeping headspace. Fellow-writer, do you need one more blank space to fill?
See, the internet rewards those who write about the same things over and over and over. If you’re a writer, odds are, you write about everything. Try rising to the first page of google if you write about your adventures in the woods and the next day you follow that up with a piece on Sudanese slavery.
If you google a Ream of Paper, guess what? I’m number five! First page, baby. This would be very rewarding if I were selling unused reams of paper to prospective paper purchasers. Alas I sell you whatever is inside my head (and you tend to be a cheap audience, by the way). There is more than a half-ream of manuscript beside me on my desk right now. I curse it every day. If you wanna buy it, click on Google’s number 5 listing in my “paper niche.”
If you’re a writer, sure set up a blog – and have a blast communicating with your audience. But take Ms. Lindey’s sixth piece of advice:
“Blogging is great for practicing writing.”
Ahem: and sentence structure, but i digress. Treat blogging as practice and you will not be disappointed in the abysmally low number of readers your BEST blog post ever managed to draw.
Wednesday’s post will most-likely be part 4 of my memoir-ish thingy on faith. Unless, of course, I go off the rails later today. This week, I am going to completely sell-out, blow reamofpaper to smithereens and began again – for the billionth time. Viva la Raza.
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