Comments on: Is blogging cannibalising your writing?

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:02:21 +0000

Hello Andres. Great you could pop in, esp as I was thinking of our conversation when I wrote this post. Very intrigued that blogging on “real” writing topics is “dangerous.” So thrilling. Do you mean that when one writes about the idea again it feels a bit like re-heated leftovers? Like, all the juice has been extracted? No? Well, that’s how I feel anyway. Your “dangerous” sounds so much more enjoyable … SGx PS. Def have to examine my blogging reasons.

By: Andres Kabel

Andres Kabel — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:03:51 +0000

I agree that blogging can leach ‘real’ writing. It seems to me the solution isn’t necessarily to stop blogging but to reassess why one blogs. Let’s face it, blogging is a mix of self promotion, self dialogue and cultural intercourse. If you blog on topics you’re specifically writing about, wow, that’s dangerous. If you blog in too introspective a manner, you end up with no audience, which is eventually depressing. If you blog and roam across the Internet twelve hours a day, you’ve no time for writing.

No magic solution exists. All you can do is regularly reassess why and how. One of the possible courses of action must be to stop blogging – if so, you hope you have the courage to take that step quick smart. Or change the blog or start a new one or . . .

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:54:10 +0000

PS. I think I’ll have that as No. 15: Always google before you blog. Sgx

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:49:43 +0000

But what a nice deprogramming regime you’ve got: ships and pastures!

By: Thomas Stazyk

Thomas Stazyk — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:57:52 +0000

(1) Good question about alpha waves I should have googled before I blogged! (yet another issue about the whole blog thing)

(2) Re the ex-corporate type, guilty as charged, but I thought that had all been taken care of by my cult deprogrammer!

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:20:11 +0000

Definitely the main advantage of blogging is practice in writing. A huge help. Maybe you don’t think of your blog posts as “squandering” ideas because you’re actually putting the ideas to good use elsewhere: in books, in the magazine. At the moment, I feel like I’m too blithely churning through ideas that in pre-blogging days I would have worked up into an article and had published somewhere. Whereas the ideas are so evanescent on the blog …

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:13:17 +0000

Mmm, it’s not blogging that’s the problem (I love it, who wouldn’t?); it’s the writing for print publications I feel I would be doing (and used to do) were I not blogging. Totally agree it’s an all-round Good Thing that people who normally wouldn’t have written anything publishable can now do so.

By: solidgoldcreativity

solidgoldcreativity — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:07:56 +0000

Are pointy alpha waves a problem? Ok, so you’ve put your finger on it re blog activity being aligned with writing goals (not an ex-corporate type, by any chance?). I don’t have any writing goals!!! Must get some tout de suite.

By: Thomas Stazyk

Thomas Stazyk — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:46:38 +0000

I really don’t know.

To me, the whole issue is discipline and focus. For example, there was a time when I used to watch MTV for several minutes a day in order to flatten my alpha waves. It worked and didn’t prevent me from living an otherwise useful life. Then they started showing Beavis and Butthead and I sensed that further exposure might cause brain damage, so I curtailed my viewing.

Similarly, if your blog activity is aligned with your writing goals there should be no problem. If it isn’t but is fun/relaxing/stimulating, then there should still be no problem. If you are doing it because you think you have to and are finding it hard to juggle Tweets (or is it Twits?) Facebook and your blog, then your time might be better spent elsewhere.

By: andreaskluth

andreaskluth — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:48:05 +0000

Yes, like Phil, I don’t think of my blog posts as “squandering” ideas that I might otherwise use in a book, either the one I’m actually writing right now or a future one.

Instead, I’ve started thinking about posts as “airing” ideas the way you let wine breathe. You see what the reaction is, you test them intellectually, you let them sit and link to them months later when you have another idea, and so on.

I think the main obstacle for unpublished writers is lack of practice … writing. And blogging helps with that.

But as Phil said, those 1% of bloggers who do get published in print, would get published anyway, blog or no blog.