Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Blogging?



It’s been some time since I’ve written anything for my blog and it will probably be just as long before I get back to it again. It’s because I am trying to follow some advice I picked up last June at the Iowa Writers Festival. On the last day of class the instructor reminded us that it’s important to make time each day to write. Following a spirited discussion about how hard that is to do given the fact that life keeps getting in the way, we all calmed down and started sharing some tips for keeping the busy-ness of our lives from interfering with our writing projects. Naturally, the subject of blogs came up.



Not everyone in the group was convinced blogging is such a good idea. Some of us wonder if maybe it ends up being one more distraction that gets in the way of our other writing projects. By the time I’ve written what I want to say and figured out how to make the damn thing look the way I want it to look by adding links and photos, I’m usually appalled at how long it’s taken. And so I end up with even less time for the other writing I want to be doing.



On the other hand…the faithful bloggers in my workshop claimed it lets them exercise their writing muscles on a regular basis. They said blogging encourages them to observe and pay closer attention to what’s going on around them so they can turn it into a blog post. And finally, they like the fact that blogging gives them a head start on ideas they can come back to later since blog posts can be edited, revised, expanded upon, polished and turned into articles, poems, essays, short stories, memoirs, or just about anything a writer might want to turn out.



As for me….the jury’s still out. It’s nearly September and I haven’t posted anything since April. That’s pretty clear evidence that I don’t have the kind of lifestyle (not to mention the discipline) needed to be a faithful blogger. But I love to write, almost as much as I love to read, and one way or another on most days I usually manage to do both. I doubt if my blog will ever replace the journal I’ve been keeping for the past 30 or so years. And I’ve been accumulating a jumble of notes and jottings about a couple of ideas that are begging to be written about. Because I have to admit that having had one book published is a little like getting one tattoo. You just naturally want to do it again. (And I know what I’m talking about – having done both!)



Having spent far too much time trying to get the following information centered under the graphics that appear in this post, I’ll do it this way instead:
“A Matter of Time” Kathleen Patrick
“Blogging Woman” free clip art
“the Time” Giovanni Rapti
“Edith Wharton at her writing desk” from the Beinecki Library, Rm 26
“Man Getting a Tattoo” free clip art