Writer's block, an owner's guide: Blogging for writers
A man who knows me rather well - and whose book, which I’ve read and benefited from, is coming out in a few weeks - sent me a letter this week about my “need to go back and rewrite your writings posted on the web in order to make them better, and the web allows you to do this. While the benefits of this are obvious, the downside is that it creates an environment for [perfectionism]. When does it end? When is something ready for publication? Let yourself be flawed…”
His reasoning is correct. If you’re using a weblog as a place to develop a book, that’s a perfect place to go on playing with your material forever, and never to freeze it into a final version that you’re willing to see in print.
But you could say the same about a word processor. That’s a perfect place to go on playing with your material forever, and never to freeze it into a final version that you’re willing to see in print.
So I don’t think that’s a valid criticism of my choice to blog. But I do think I should take this opportunity to justify my choice.
What I get out of blogging, as a way to develop material that I want to include in a book one day, is this:
1. you, my reader - and these days I know from computer logs that there actually are humans out there who read this stuff regularly - you give me accountability. On days when I publish nothing, I worry about you and whether you will lose interest and remove my site from your my.yahoo. That helps me to keep writing. When I run out of things to say on one subject, your presence spurs me to move sideways to another. Thank you.
2. And accountability is not just about posting weblog entries, it’s also about keeping my word in other areas. When the workshop in Southern California was postponed I wondered about how You, my readers in Britain and Malaysia, would respond to that. When I write about publishing a hardcopy book in the future it’s not because I expect you to buy it (why would you when you were right here with me on this journey of developing it?) but because I wonder what you would think of me if I failed. So one of the weblog’s various purposes is as a carefully planned self-manipulation to make me get things done.
3. The weblog allows me to try things out without their being crystallized; it’s a scratchpad, a playground where everything is flexible, where no mistake is un-fixable, where there is nothing to fear except silence. Print is different.
Since the very beginning of this weblog last July, I’ve been meaning to publish a list of the ways it benefits my writing. Today at last I’ve described some of them. I hope I’ll come back to the subject because I think what we have here is not even half of the list.
All the same, because this is a weblog, I can publish what I have and can invite you to comment (please comment, don’t be shy: the response form is right down there, look) and I can respond to you, and from our dialogue will grow wisdom, knowledge and cheap laughs.
Published on April 28, 2005 at 6:54 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/blogging-for-writers.html
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