The ones that keep up with their blogs and have posts scheduled months in advance and are reliable?
Yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not one of those people.
And it’s not anything like laziness, or lack of topic ideas. It’s more like lack of time and the fear that if I use the limited time I do have to write writing this that means that I won’t be writing books.
It’s a hard spot to be in.
There was a panel about this very topic at AWP, but it was presented very badly and I didn’t get anything out of it. But the question of whether we, as writers, are maybe allotted a certain number of words a day, and we have to be economical with them, not spend them on things like blogs and social media, but rather on our Work-In-Progress…the idea has some merit.
But it’s also a scary thought. Are words, the words that are flowing through me, really that scarce? Is it maybe that it’s easier to post 144 characters than actually sit down here and pound out a meaningful article? And, also, the fear that no one is reading this anyway, so maybe it really is a waste of time?
I think, for me, it’s a general feeling of scarcitiy around my writing. A feeling that has no basis in anything but fear. A feeling I’m working hard to get rid of.
I’m a:
- wife
- mother
- daughter
- sister
- friend
- author
- employee
- contractor
- business owner
- business executive
- finance department
- chef
- chauffeur
- lifeguard
- editer
- designer
- the list goes on and on…
All of these things to different people, different organizations. But being a good one or two of them doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m automatically neglecting the others. I’m trying to remind myself of that, every day. I can’t do everything at once, but I can do it all in turn.
I’m going to make a shift with this blog. I’ve tried to keep it semi-professional in the past, to make it a place to learn about me as a person, but mostly about my writing and jewelry. I’m giving up on that. I’m not going to worry so much about what I should be blogging anymore, and be more honest about where I’m at in life. I thought about trying to start another blog with something about wishing for a flip-phone in it’s name (I wanted another F word that meant wishing, but never came up with one) to talk about how tempted I am to trash the iPhone and all of the connectivity and return to having just a phone that people had to call me on. I’m going to write more about stuff like that.
I’m still going to tell you about my books and the stuff going on with the Ruby Slippers investigation. It’s just going to get a lot more personal.
I hope that’s okay.
