The Importance of Blogging
I’ve let blogging dissipate. Two weeks ago, I was convinced this was fine. I thought of blogging as only a social activity (still is, for me), and Facebook took over that area of my life.
But I didn’t realize how important blogging was to my writing productivity until the other day. First, I blogged, and then writing went well. Second, someone’s blog or status update made me realize that back when I blogged every day, I was nailing higher word counts more easily. Writing was going MUCH better.
That realization surprised me. I know Erica blogs to “warm up” the writing in the morning. And many, many writers wrote letters and essays to warm up or practice their writing skills, before blogs or computers were around.
The largest benefit is having to organize my thoughts—very, very difficult for me, as we’ve already ascertained. (Fish Oil helps a lot, wow, a lot.) A blog post is small enough to make organizing my thoughts doable, and large enough to exercise my brain’s muscle in doing so.
Secondly, it helps to write in complete sentences. Sometimes this comes naturally to me, and sometimes it doesn’t. I can’t tell you how many writing days I have (about 50%), where just bits come out of my fingers. It’s awful. It seems that writing a sentence ought to be easy for a writer, but some days my brain is so disorganized, that it’s edging toward impossible. I even struggle with it in blog posts, but it’s easier: in a blog post, every sentence need not be as vivid and honed as in fiction. (Maybe it should be, but…)
Third, it forces me to say something, to come up with an idea, to develop it, and to deliver it.
And finally, I get to practice the “finishing” muscle. A novel takes forever and ever to write. Months. Every day, I’m left feeling I have more to do. The task is never completed. Even if I hit the word count, the incompleteness of the entire work nags at me.
Finishing a blog post is satisfying. It gives me that I-did-it feeling, plus the pride of completion—important feelings to practice often. And it’s a reminder that I can finish things, when in the midst of a novel, this confidence can fade, and then writing becomes a struggle.
I think these arguments can also be applied to writing poetry, flash fiction, and short stories—other things I need to start doing more of.
So my goal, from now on, is to compose a blog post, flash fiction, poem (*cringe* as I’m so bad at it), or half a short story every day.
And I should be back on the blogging circuit more. I need to organize my Reader. I have at least 200 feeds, and frankly, that’s too many. I need to at least get my closest friends in one folder so I can read you guys first off, instead of having you disappear amongst 1,000+ unread posts.
Have you let blogging slide? Do you notice any benefits to blogging? Do you write short stories or poems or anything else, to help you write novels? Or just to help you be a writer?
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Natasha Fondren is an eBook developer, writer, and classical pianist. After a fifteen-year piano teaching career, she moved to Arizona and built a book design business. She enjoys the lizards and desert heat in Arizona with her Border Collie, Padfoot, and her cat, Dixie Doodle.
The shorts I fill my blog with REALLY help me flesh out my characters. And blogging’s fun.
But back to that fiction… I wish you could see what I’ve got waiting to get posted, or for me to do something else with. I’ve been playing with the idea of putting stuff up at Scribd. Maybe posting extra shorts at Smashwords, for free. I don’t know… But there’s enough of it that I ought to do more with it, ya know?
I love your shorts, Susan! And if you have stuff lying around, why not get it out there, you know? I’m all for that!
Have I let blogging slide?
Well, you used to read my blog when it was there to read so I guess you know the answer to that one!
However, while I enjoy blogging when I feel like I have something of interest to say, to me it is writing, and if I am blogging then that’s the kind of writing I’m doing, rather than some other sort I could be doing instead. It doesn’t help my other writing, which is also pretty sparse lately.
I have written one sort of thing to assist me with another, though. Before Mary and I wrote our great unpublished Victorian book I wrote a short story, of sorts, just to get the feel for writing something set in a Victorian setting.
I still read your blog, Eric! That makes sense. I mean, you write a bunch of non-fic writing, anyway. I think it’s very cool that you warmed up with a short story. That’s a good technique to keep in mind!
I agree with each of your points.
Also, my darling friend, thank you for the lovely comment you left on Moonmouse’s blog.
Well-deserved! I’m so excited, Bernita!
I let blogging slide on my personal site. My focus has been on finishing my current book. I think when I was writing the book, then I had fun. But I’ve been revising 6 times this last 5 weeks, and I’ve been focused on that. My Magical Musings blog is different. I need to keep that up. In fact, I need to write one for tomorrow.
Oh nice, Edie! A fun book to write is sure a treasure. And wow, that’s a lot of revision. I love your Magical Musings blogs.
I need to blog because I need to write something that gets finished. Something that I don’t revise. Something that has an endpoint. As opposed to my current revision.
Nice post! Thanks!
Totally true, Heather! I so need that endpoint! Feels great!
I SO needed this. I just posted a “this is why I haven’t been and won’t be blogging for awhile” blog this morning, and I was cool with my reasons/excuses. But this was so right on: “And finally, I get to practice the ‘finishing’ muscle.” That’s exactly what I need! So thanks for the kick-in-the-ass. You rock.
I missed it, RJ. I’ll have to go check it out, LOL. I’d abandoned it, thinking it was an unimportant time suck, but looking back, I just realized I get more out of it than I thought. I need it!
*blushes* Thanks, RJ!
In my Eng. Lit. courses the professor had us free-write at the beginning of each class. He said it helped open up any blocks, even if we didn’t have any. It worked. I still do it.
That’s awesome, Kath! Bill Henderson pointed me to this site that makes you freewrite for 5 minutes. I used to do it every day, but I need to get back in the habit.
I found that my blogging was just the thing I needed to help me develop my writing. Blogging was the natural next step up from doing chat rooms and I haven’t looked back since.
After two years though, I have curtailed my blogging to a certain degree, simply because I started working on my novel and I wanted to concetrate my energies on that. So instead of blogging every other day, I’m now down to blogging on a M-W-F schedule, and even with that, because I have a short story blog, I only need to come with two posts a week.
Just got done writing a dozen posts over the past week so I’m all set for the month of May.
G, blogging has helped me develop my writing, too. That sounds like a great schedule, and wow! That’s cool that you write them so ahead of time!
I go through spurts. Last year, I got inspired to the point where I wrote about 3 months worth of blog posts and it took me until November to use them all.
I’m trying to get back into blogging. I still do but my readership has severely declined. So I’m switching up my style, skipping the boring writing posts, which I was writing mostly for myself, and going back to life posts, dorky stuff that’s fun, odd observations, etc.
I still read everything you blog, Betsy! I haven’t been commenting much, anymore, but I mean to start again.
I do notice that I start a lot of blog posts that I abandon, though.
I think that the online response are more a product of how many blogs I comment at, rather than what I say. I haven’t been commenting even a third as much tese last few months, and the visits to my blog have seriously fallen off!
That’s a great point! It is really satisfying to finish a post in a nice little package, whereas a writing project always feels sort of undone.
I really enjoy finishing a post and waiting to read comments. I check my e mail throughout the day, and it feels so nice to hear from friends. It always makes me smile.
Robin, it is satisfying! I like the little packages with the bow all tied up.
I adore hearing from friends, too!
especially when I first started blogging I found it a tremendous boost to my writing productivity, especially for nonfiction. In fact, I wrote about it in Write With fire, and some of the articles in there got their start via blogger.
Blogging helps my writing not by warming me up, but by making me think about the process of writing. I think you definitely learn more by teaching a topic; and blogging/essay writing is manifestly the same thing.
But blogging can also distract me from production.
Granted, my blogs are mostly cover art, but I agree that writing them gives me a sense of accomplishment. I may not be working on the “N” word, but at least I’m still writing something.
Two weeks ago I reorganized my Reader folders into Favorites – Friends, Favorites, Agents, and Weekend. It’s amazing how much I reduced stress just by doing that.