You want to be an author or make a living writing? Or work as a freelancer from home? Having a blog is a good thing. But posting too much is not. Here’s why.
I used to post several times a week here. Now I post once a week or sometimes less. It’s not that I don’t have ideas. I have lots of them and if I go personal, I would be telling you some interesting stories.
But I find myself holding back much in the same way as I abstain from social media. Getting views, likes, and comments provides validation and gratification. The more of them you get, the more you want to get.
Even if you separate yourself from all of that, disable likes, not answer comments all that much, blogging still requires a good dose of energy and a serious commitment.
Keeping a Blog Alive Is Work
Keeping a blog alive through the years is tougher than maintaining an active presence on social media. Over the years, I’ve seen many of my blogging friends post less and less until their blogs began to gather dust.
You can say that many popular writers have blogs. Indeed. But many of them created a blog after they published or released their best works, as a way to connect with their audience. Or else for them their blog is an essential platform for promoting their work.
That may not be your case. When we are at the beginning of our writing careers, we need to focus on the writing, to make it the best that we can make it, and that requires concentrated attention and a lot of work, that is, a lot of writing.
Blogging can be a distraction for a writer, same as with social media. It can make you focus too much on the writing process, on marketing, on interacting with others. It can fragment your writing experience and prevent the state of flow you need to get into for you to write awesome things.
Often, writing also requires for you to plunge deeply within yourself and lie there at the bottom of your inner aquarium undisturbed by social influences—unconnected and alone—before returning to the surface with a starfish or two, and a better understanding of yourself.
And then there’s the risk that by blogging every day and reading the same blogs all the time, you will end up sounding like everyone else and writing like everyone else. And you probably don’t want that, do you?
Blogging Shouldn’t Feel Like Work
In the past, I used to feel a bit guilty about not posting more often. Because I invested a lot of time and energy into this blog and every post was an expression of who I was.
But when life got in the way and I wasn’t able to post for a time as often as before, I understood that my blog wasn’t going anywhere, that it would always be there for me (so long as I renewed the domain name, anyway).
Blogging shouldn’t feel like work or like an obligation. When it starts feeling that way, it’s good to take it easier. Over time, blogging fatigue builds up, especially among us writers.
The same is true for social media. If you want to be a writer, the most important thing is to write. To give the best of your time and energy to your writing projects. Blogging, social media can distract you, derail you even.
By making it very easy to publish your writing, these platforms may prevent you from plunging deep enough within you and maintaining your concentrated attention on a specific topic for long enough to peel it down to its core.
The Bottom Line
My message, dear writer, is this: let’s blog, but let’s do it wisely, only when we have something good to say, something that requires us to express it. Let’s not let the attention that our blog can bring us or the ease with which it lets us publish things distract us in any way from our greater writing projects.
boy with a hat 
Yeah it’s pretty easy to get caught up with the likes and views instead of the effort you put into your WIPs. A timely reminder, especially for me since I’m on WP now doing the rounds, lol. Thanks for sharing this!
Insightful post that I can relate to in a couple ways. Thanks for sharing it in such a clear straightforward way! When songwriting or writing business articles for a magazine, I take a l’il breather from my blog which i thoroughly enjoy, and like to keep it that way. Maintaining a blog is work but it’s mostly fun especially since i’ve already published books – it’s a way of directly connecting with the readers I’m thankful for, without pressure. Really appreciate your post!
Songwriting? Makes me curious. Any song you’d like to share?
Sure, and thanks for asking. What’s the best way to share it with you? Just in case there’s a player on my blog but happy to send a listening link too. What’s best for you?
Send me a link to the player on your blog. 🙂
Thanks. http://www.reverbnation.com/musicwithin
Here! Here!
I just had this conversation with my husband moments ago. MOMENTS!! How ironic is that? I agree about platform and using a blog to sell books. I have to get published before that happens. I’m working on that too.
In my case, being an upbeat adventure blogger has become a challenge since I’ve been home most of the time like everyone else. I still manage to blog about 3-4 times a month.
I’m an empathetic person and feel everything that is going on in the world. The feels are pretty dang depressing. We won’t be like this forever. In the meantime, any writing is writing and books are my priority too. I’ve been in revision-mode and have started on new novels. It’s a great escape!
I just started a blog which I plan on using to share some of my writing, so I found your post to be extremely relevant. As I hope to one day be published, I feel like right now having a blog will help me remember to actually write. However, I need to remember that it is not my main writing. Thank you so much for this reminder as the excitement of starting something new may have otherwise made it difficult to remember!
I somewhere agree with you but I don’t too. You ll publish when you ll but publishers view has also changed over the years for new writers. Like they certainly prefer someone who’s reach is somewhere better on social media, who can show that he/she can sell some thousand copies to start with.
Point being we all started blogging to Express at the least, and then we slowly start choosing how much to express to come to a stage when we hardly Express thinking we will do it the best way possible as authors.
Isnt it waiting for perfection ?
Good point. But I would say that it depends on what someone wants to publish. Blogging as a medium is not equally appealing to all groups of readers. Not everyone who buys books reads blogs. Also, many of my favorite contemporary writers don’t blog.
True as well, probably blogging as such hasn’t been able to acquire or earn the serious tag, at the same time i do not want to underestimate its reach. I think its a much sharper tool to carry some very valuable relationships, if you happen to be an above average writer that also means connecting to your reader through all mediums, marketing, as a promoter-seller, this can double the rate of your reach.
Else, i could have never believed a writer like Pico Iyer has to post one quote a day to feel in the market of digitalisation.