While Rusty remains camera shy, I’ll recap last night’s writing forum hosted by Cindy LaFerle. It was fun again. I wasn’t shy again. In fact, I was talkier than last time, which might not be so great. It’s hard to know when to shut up and let other people have a turn.
I jumped in on the first question, advising some poor woman who wondered if she should try writing again since the chances of publication were so slim and writing was such hard work and afterward the pages would just sit there in a drawer ignored by the world. It was maybe too sad. Maybe she should paint instead. At least she could hang her art on the wall.
I replied that if she was that concerned about getting published, maybe she should paint instead of write. I mellowed this harsh by mentioning that first you need to be passionate about whatever you do, be it writing or painting. You need to want to write more than you want to be published. You need to write for love of the word, even if your work never sees publication.
And then I said she could write for her family. She shook her head no, saying something about how nobody in her family would care to read what she wrote.
“But maybe someday somebody will. I loved reading my great-grandmother’s diary from the year she was 18 and dating my great-grandfather.” This is where I perhaps wandered into TMI territory.
Still, the woman nodded, if skeptically.
“And then there’s always blogging,” I said. “I used to want to be published, but the minute I started blogging that went away. I felt published!” Naturally, I forgot to add that once I stopped wanting to be published, once I felt published by blogging, I suddenly got all kinds of opportunities to be published in print. For money. I got magazine jobs and freelance assignments and placed a personal essay in a major anthology. I published my book. All my dreams came true!
Why didn’t I tell her that part? Well, I’d already taken up a lot of time, so I thought I should shut up for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, for the next hour, audience and panel discussed the merits and problems with blogging. Audience members wanted to know if a blog was necessary, if they’d look like an amateur if they didn’t have one. They had concerns about intellectual theft and how to find time to blog and what to write about if they did have the time.
Naturally I had a ton to say about all of this, but I refrained. Mostly.
Panelists were divided on the glories of the blog, although most of us agreed that the word “blog” is icky. Many agreed with audience members about the dilemma of wasting possible paid print writing topics on a mere blog.
Here’s what I wish I would have said about that: I write novels and my blog is about the writing process. Just day by day what kinds of things I come up against as a writer. I wish I would have said I love blogging because I feel like I’m connecting to a whole world of other would-be novelists, each of us confronting the same kinds of problems, each of us glad to be able to communicate our issues or at least have them validated. I wish I would have said it is so not about the money or the missed print opportunity. I wish I’d said that blogging gives me much more satisfaction than sitting on an idea while Writer’s Digest takes six months to reject it.
But the bottom line with blogging is that you have to like doing it. It’s just like writing in general. You should like doing it first. And if you do, then everything else will fall into place.
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