Blogging about blogging
I got my start as a professional writer by blogging. I wrote every day for hours per day, for the pure joy of it. I engaged with my audience. It was a truly satisfying experience, for YEARS.
Eventually, I began to feel confident that I could transfer that dedication to daily amateur writing into professional writing. I started slowly, with one or two freelance assignments per month. Over time, I became a full-time writer, producing journalism, PR, and ad copy for a variety of clients each month, while continuing personal blogging on the side.
Next, I leapt from personal blogging to professional opinion writing and fiction on the side. From there, due to life changes, back into the world of full-time business stuff with fiction on the side. In and out and in and out and in and out…
You know what happened next: full-time mom stuff with fiction on the side. The fiction writing career became a bit of an obsession. It was a way to cope with the stress of being a homeschooling mom of four with a new baby. It was a release valve from the pressures of being a caregiver to two dying people. It was an outlet for the stress of chronic illness, divorce, in-laws, outlaws, politics, feminism, anything, everything, really.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: novels require a tremendous amount of work, and novelists are gamblers. I gambled a lot on my work. I made some money, but I purposefully chose to connect with readers in a different way by doing so. I climbed up onto a stage and picked up a microphone. That’s a much different way to converse with someone than sitting next to them at a table.
A blog readership is like a very big table, really. A novelist’s reach is toward a different kind of audience. It’s soloing at Carnegie Hall…it’s open mic night at the local cafe. It’s a lot of give, give, give. In many cases, you don’t even want feedback. You just want to shout or sing or dance, then walk away. PERFORM!
Blogging has changed since the early 00s, but the process behind it hasn’t–not for me. You sit down, you open a vein, it pours out. (Apologies to Hemingway.) You read back through it once, you add a photo, you hit “post.” Poof, done. Answer comments later, make friends, give eprops and smileys, feel good…occasionally get pissed off.
The cost of giving away all that blood for free is that it attracts the vampires. I know people want to call it trolling, but trolls aren’t by virtue unkind. Trust me. Vampires, on the other hand, MUST feed on your blood.
Publishing fiction has a way of insulating you personally against the internet vampires. Sure, they’re out there, but you don’t HAVE to be their lunch. You can ignore them. If you ignore them, though, that means you also miss out on the friendly feedback.
But maybe everyone misses out on that, these days. The internet has changed how we read, tremendously. Short and sweet is the new black, and it doesn’t pair well with a woman’s need to think things through via the page.
At the same time, producing a quantifiable piece of reading material that you put up for sale attaches an actual financial value to the work that has feelings of transference for the writer. It’s unavoidable. If I’m selling and you’re not buying, then…
Why not just blog? It’s easier. It flows.
I know a lot of folks in this day and age are leaving blogging completely behind, but I can’t help but feel that perhaps for me, for the time being, in this age of uncertainty and full-time mom-stuff, blogging might be just the thing.
Maybe I can squeeze in an hour of writing here and there, and maybe…it could be on the blog. Maybe it *should* be on the blog. Maybe not even a specialized blog like Allergy News was, or anything like that. Maybe…it’s more personal than that. Maybe it’s not so commercial. Maybe it’s time to put some time into thinking aloud, online, just for the experience of writing.
Maybe I can manage that once in awhile.
