Ay yi yi, I'm not really fulfilling my end of the bargain here, am I? I can't figure out exactly what keeps me from blogging more often than I do. Though I have some ideas:
1. My own internal standards of perfection. Blogging, by nature, is a relatively off-the-cuff enterprise. Have thought, type it out, hit send. For someone who labors over every paragraph for hours, by nature, that's a foreign concept. And an unsettling one. Result: avoidance.
2. Time. Well, we all know about that one. Two kids, one husband, one house, two cats, a book that needs to be promoted, a book that needs to be conceived, students, the 2:45 school pickup daily, dinner every night, endless bills, taxes due soon. Structure and time management have never been my fortes. Why do today what you can't do today? Result: procrastination.
3. Fear of narcissism. Maybe I'm unduly affected by readers who accuse me (and other memoirists; I'm not alone) of being self-absorbed. With all that's going on in the world--Haiti, California's budget fiasco, nutso bank bonuses, the price of gas, and (god help us all) Scott Brown, who cares what I have to say? Even more to the point, is it fair of me to try to make other people care what I have to say when so many other more important things are going on in the world (see above)? Result: self-doubt.
If any of you have suggestions not just for how to get oneself on a regular blogging schedule, but also how to keep believing that one's own thoughts are worth sharing on a regular basis--I'm interested in hearing them. In the meantime, I'll be blogging when I know I have something worthwhile to say, not just to fill space and time. God knows, we all have enough demands on our time these days.
3 comments:
Do what I do, write whatever pops into your head when you get into Blogger's Dashboard, quickly press Publish Post and then walk away! Think of it as an elongated Facebook status!
Wow, seven posts in seven days, just thinking about that would make me run in the other direction. I have many of the same issues as you, like procrastination, perfectionist (although you might not always know it by my blog) etc., but I don't have the husband, kids, school things that you do. I would suggest being a little nicer to yourself, you deserve it, you just wrote an amazing book and went on a book tour, you're doing a virtual tour and you still have everything else. How bout something manageable like posts a week for a month, or three if you really want to push yourself. What are those things you see every day (the other moms at school who make you mad for one reason or another, the people who just don't get you or your children ... whatever) and just write a 200 word post about it and how you feel. It really doesn't have to be much more than that. Some days you will start though and hardly be able to stop. One day a week make it a post about your books, either POE and how it is doing and what you still have to do to market it, or whatever you are ruminating about writing next ... those of us not yet published would love to hear about your process. I love your posts so far, keep up the good work!
ooops meant to say 2 posts a week. (See that was that perfectionist in me proofreading my own comment ... not).
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