Friday, April 01, 2005

The Trouble With Blogging...

1. The moment I give someone my blog address, I can never blog about them again. Trust me, this really puts the kibosh on my yen to gossip about men, women, sex—you name it. (Plus, now that I’m two months into this, when I give out the address, I have this moment of terror that maybe I said something about them in an earlier post. This kind of possibility can give you nightmares.)


2. When I'm writing fiction, I revise about a million times before allowing a strange pair of eyes to see it, but I don’t really wanna spend an inordinate amount of time on my blog each day…you know, doing things like editing and stuff…so sometimes I slap my head at how poorly I wrote something in haste. (Case in point: I used the word "time" twice in that sentence; normally I'd go back and change one of 'em.)

3. As a corollary, I made a firm commitment to refrain from using normal writing time for blogging so I only do this at work, and get this: work actually interferes with my thought process! Now, that just sucks, doesn’t it?

3. I forget people actually read the tripe I’m posting and sometimes I reveal stuff about myself that was better kept secret.

4. Three words: pressure, pressure, pressure. Strangely enough, I’ve become aware that a few people read my blog on a regular basis…do you know how hard it is to come up with blog-worthy subjects every 24 hours? (Yeah, I know…sometimes I really miss the target…um, like today for example?)

5. I’ve lost my focus. My blog was supposed to be about my journey as an aspiring romance author. But, a) not enough happens on a day-to-day basis on the writing front—I mean, how exciting is it to hear I wrote another 2 pages? and b) I’m just not sure I want agents and editors (to whom I’ve sent queries or partials) to know that much about my writing life. (Unless I bury the info in a post like this one: shhhhh…don’t tell anyone…I sent out a requested partial to Kristen Nelson last week and entered two contests.)

6. I always think of stuff to add or change after I’ve posted…and yet, why go back if people have already read it? No one’s gonna be looking for updates. (Sidebar: heard an interview with Michael Shiavo’s brother yesterday which significantly altered my opinion on the whole mess…do I bother to go back and change my post? Add an update? Maybe later.)

6a. See? I just published this and already, I've thought of something to add: new readers see the posts in reverse order...which has to be utterly confusing.

7. I read other people’s blogs and think, what the hell am I doing this for? Only people who “know” me could be interested in anything I have to say. (Click here for a truly entertaining blog:
http://www.conversationsfamouspeople.blogspot.com )

Having said the above, I guess I’ll keep blogging away. If nothing else, at the end of the year, I’ll have a tidy little compendium (is that the proper word?) of “where my head was at” in 2005.

Hey, the older you get, the more important it is to keep those kind of records.

3 comments:

John said...

I think you should keep blogging because you actually are quite good at it.

Brooke said...

I agree with John...you should keep at it cuz you are VERY good at it!

And I had to laugh! I know exactly what you mean about the address and wondering what you've said and hoping you can remember what not to say!!! Too funny!

Randy said...

Yeah, and one day I will start another blog but this time I'm not telling a soul, and I will write to my hearts' content about everything and everyone!