How Often Do You Get Over Blogging?
Blogging, blogging, blogging.
I've been doing it for about three years now, mostly on a weekly basis, often daily, but lately that distance has been slipping further and further. It's easy for a month to go by without an entry.
Anne Frasier said that a blog has a lifetime of about a year and a half, probably a close match to the hormones generated during any new relationship, that good old honeymoon period. Mine's obviously gone for longer. The idea for the original blog was that I would write it as my fictional character and alter-ego, Danny Hawaii. That idea didn't hold for too long (mostly because my stories never lived up to the character's name), and after about six months I just felt silly doing it.
My thoughts where that if I was to become a real author type personage, that I should damn well act like one and start now. After a brief flirtation with the idea of a pen name (because I didn't think my own name was marketable), I decided to stick to who I was and thus this blog was born. The very early entries were hand-imported from the Danny Hawaii blog and are still accessible in the sidebar.
Along the way, I've experimented with all sorts of posts, ranging from quick images with only a title, to what I hope are well thought-out pieces that are almost articles. At one point I even created another blog called 'Food What I Ate'. It was a surreal food blog, following my culinary adventures with mostly inappropriate captioning. The photos are still on my Flickr account, but the blog no longer exists.
I suppose Crimespace does take up a fair amount of my wet CPU power, which leaves just about enough for writing and other forms of entertainment. Every so often, I'll have an item of writing-related news to share, but I'm not a prolific short story writer, so those are few and far between.
Just to make it clear, because I'm sure the tone of this post implies that I'm saying goodbye ... I'm not. I'm still here and I'll be staying here, but you can take this as something of an explanation of my slackness in posting. And it always helps to get my thoughts out there, always makes it more real.
So how often do you get over blogging, you blogging types out there?
A lost and faithless fellow blogger wants to know.
6 comments:
I wrestle with how often and what to say a lot. I guess the type of people who need to spew their thoughts into space (like me) do it for longer and more often. Also in person, I'm pretty quiet.
I also use it to communicate with certain family members and friends, not just other bloggers. I love my blogger friends though and would miss hearing from them in this informal way. They would fall away if my blog did.
Well Daniel, this is why you see more book reviews and guest authors appearing on mine. I like blogging but time is a factor (at least for nonpaying work like this). I have about a dozen posts written or started, but I need to make sure they're truly pithy and not just a rehash of previous posts about being a writing parent (my worst fear). I do like helping other writing parents market their work, so I think the reviews and whatnot help. In fact, I think that fits with the initial mission I had: to help other writing parents feel less isolated. So I'm hoping it will work out.
My goal is to balance writing, grad school and blogging.
Sometimes I'll slack off on two to focus on one, then put the one on the back burner to focus on the other two.
I think if you slack off blogging for too long, you may lose readers. I've also seen a lot of "blogger burnout" from folks who got really popular and/or who became a slave/addict to blogging and then became overwhelmed.
It's all about moderation, IMO.
So far, I'm able to keep up with a moderate blog schedule, but plan to become more active once school ends for me.
Don't fucking scare me like that! Sheesh, damn Aussie.
Yeah, blogging is a strange whatever it is. But, I'd miss it if I didn't do a bit here and there, and I'd miss your blog if you pulled the plug.
I'm not so sure that blogging is something one has to get over, like a cold. (Or a colonization... but that's a different story.)
It is, I think, essential that the blogger keep doing it -- or not doing it -- for the right reasons. If you're doing it because you must or you feel that it's expected, you might as well stay home.
Personally, I keep doing it because it's fun and because -- like most writers -- I have a well developed sense of the ridiculous and quite often stumble across something that must be as widely shared as possible. A blog is a good place to do that, none better in a way.
There are people out there who blog too much, too often. They write a lot about nothing, but they do it with impressive regularity and thus, I suppose think that they're doing what they should; what they ought.
How much is too much? How much is not enough? Don't force it, don't wrestle. Ask your heart. It knows.
Patti: I love my blogger friends too. You're all as real to me as my plastic dead ducks, my cats, and my workmates. Phooey to those neuro-biologists that say we're hard wired in wetware for fifteen close friendships at a time.
Christa: I'm right there with you, I have a handful of posts that are half-finished but I've lost interest. Maybe I was looking for inspiration to finish them.
Josephine: Thanks for dropping in, I haven't seen you round these parts before. Yes, balance is key, but I tend to find a balance of extremes. A lot of this and almost none of that, if you know what I mean.
Angie: I'm not leaving, I'll always have me-me-me stuff to talk about, even if it's not that often.
And I have to laugh. How can I scare someone with a permanent Halloween mask?
Linda: And now you're over here too. Sheesh, we meet everywhere!
Asking my heart is the right idea: I've always said in the past that I do it because I like the other people that do it and it makes me part of that community. That's reason enough.
Love that cover!
Post a Comment