I just couldn’t stand to see this division stay empty much longer; it’s my own heart and soul!

I personally have found that while posting takes a bit of time away from writing fiction or poetry, for example, I also found that it keeps me writing rather than being useless and unproductive during those less inspired moments.  Writing about writing, throwing those odd bits of creative spoutings into a post rather than lose them forever when I know darn well they’ll never be part of a structured story, writing about reading, and just writing to add to the very experience of it or just building up typing speed, watching grammer until it becomes second nature, and improving sentence structure, imagery, brevity, etc. have all been a part of the weblog experience that I think justifies the ends.

There are things I really need work on some more, and as seen in the above, run-on sentences may be one of them.

Anyone else have some thoughts on writing?

My biggest problem with writing on the blog is that my writing time, which is limited, is the same for blogging and creative writing, i.e. for the most part, if I blog, I take away from my writing time. Since writing blog posts is easier than creative writing, I tend to go with the path of least resistance. One of these days I’ll get balanced!

Though writing fiction and poetry is important to me, the majority of my work involves non-fiction, research-based writing. I view my blog as an extention of that writing (though my blog tends to be less serious)and as an opporunity to improve the way I think, research, and write. Though blogging doesn’t generate income like some of my other writing does, it’s still an important aspect of my development as a writer. For that reason, I don’t view it as time away from writing.

Also, I recall from English 101 that the best way to improve writing is by reading. I’ve always been an avid reader, but I read even more in my quest for unique blog material.

I think it was in June or July 2003 that I was really trying to figure out what I would do with my writing career.  I’m one of these write-it-and-put-it-on-the-shelf kind of guys.  I’ve written drafts of about ten novels and they are all right there on my shelf.  Only a few friends have ever seen them or read them.  Since about 1996 I’ve been writing and emailing a sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly newsletter with book reviews, cultural commentary, political stuff, musings on jazz, critiques of films, et cetera.  I have a whole box of printouts, a record of nearly ten years of ephemera.  What I was trying to figure out in the summer of 2003 was whether I was a writer of ephemera (essays) or a writer of fiction.  For about a month I decided I was going to throw myself into writing essays for my periodical—concentrate my efforts and see if I could be successful at it, but I got sidetracked by novel pains—there was another novel in me and I had to get it out.

I didn’t learn about blogging until the 2004 NaNoWriMo when I realized that a lot of people doing NaNo had these things called blogs.  So being naturally curious, I started my own blog and I have been blogging ever since.  I don’t bother with my periodical anymore.  I just blog.

Last summer (2005) I said, “what the hell” and started posting fiction to my blog too.  I serialized an entire novel and posted numerous short fiction pieces.  I’ve learned a lot about fiction blogging in the process.

Recently, I’ve revived a dormant beer writing career and have given my blog a more beer oriented theme, but still write about all those other subjects I enjoy writing about.

Even though I enjoy blogging, I still can’t shake the idea that it is a distraction from the fiction writing I should be doing.  Serializing a novel on my blog was one of my proposed solutions to this tension between blogging and “real writing.” I’m back at work on a novel (not blog-serializing this time) and I’m finding that my blogging is really a distraction again.  This morning I spent my entire two hour morning writing block working on an article that I’ll eventually post to my blog (when it’s finished).  Got nothing accomplished on the novel today.

The other problem I have is that even when I write something for my blog, I’m still not finished.  I have to add hyperlinks and prepare the photos.  All of this takes up precious writing time.  Right now I have about four or five posts that I still need to hyperlink and get the photos for.  So I really don’t have time enough for the blogging I want to do.

I have a lot more to say about blogging and writing, but I’ll stop here and see where this takes the conversation.

I think we’ve had some good posts on the site about blogging and writing - I personally see it as a distraction, but as distractions go, it’s not a bad one. Primarily for me though, blogging is a) community with others - even though I live in place with probably the highest concentration of writers anywhere (brooklyn, NY), it’s not like everyone’s just hanging out at the local coffee shop. and 2) to the extent that reading and writing are inextricably linked, which I believe they are, I use the blog to think about what I read. Doing so in a public, albeit informal, environment, makes me think harder about what I read, therefore read better and hopefully write better too.

Impressive, by the way, all that writing - it all seems like you were a proto-blogger of sorts with your newsletter.

My blogging is more of a break from my fiction, different in voice and aim.  I’ll admit it’s a distraction sometimes, too.  It’s possible to lose hours in preparing, posting, linking, and then surfing to find the next thing I want to post on.  Since blogging has the capacity to steal from my novels and short stories occasionally, I’ve had to try to shift it to later hours when my head doesn’t want to work on fiction.  However, not being a high throughput fictioneer with a background in ad copy or journalism, blogging has also provided a kind of discipline in creating an almost daily production schedule.  That’s made me more likely to tackle my fiction even when I don’t feel like it and more able to just grind out some progress in the time I’ve got.

This is a great thread. For me, it’s all about community. My blogging energizes me. I do it early in the morning, and then I get to work.

One of the things I blogged about this morning was the potential for finding new leads and threads of investigation.  I wrote about Hopscotch by Julio Cort?zar and someone commented with a suggestion to look at Milorad Pavic’s The Dictionary of the Khazars (which I did).  Pavic’s book is relevant to the novel I’m writing (in the metatextual sense, nonlinearity, read participation, et cetera).  I also noticed while I was trying to find The Dictionary of the Khazars, that Pavic has a book with a Tarot theme (possibly also another nonlinear text, we’ll see).  The point is that I probably wouldn’t have learned about Pavic if I didn’t write my blog.

I find that ‘publishing’ something, even if it’s just to the Internet, forces me to be more careful about my writing style than I would be otherwise. So blogging is great practice, because it makes me spellcheck my posts, and watch my grammar, and try not to curse as much as I do in real life. And you have to love the instant feedback from like minds - that’s my favorite part!

I am not working on another writing project at the moment, but I imagine that ideally one would feed the other, not detract.

Goodness, I guess I didn’t mark this thread for notification on updated comments and I’m so glad that others are thinking about the “where do I write?” question.  I think there’s a general consensus that follows all the weblog writers’ angst over the past couple of years that time is the problem.  But I agree with so many of you that 1) it fills in the time when we’re not writing that book, story, poem, etc., 2) it brings feedback that’s often invaluable, 3) it’s that necessary practice--especially with Big Brother Metaxu looking on--that eliminates the whining posts and makes us strive to always look our best, and 4) it’s the camaraderie that makes the lone writer feel a part of something that’s bigger than us--something we knew we couldn’t hold back but still question and justify:  The need to write.

I love blogging - it takes up a lot of time, but not a second is wasted.

Blogging is good excercise in writing - in the art of producing a good opening line, and lean prose. 

And I’ve made friends with other writers through my blog and theirs.

Living in a country where English is a second language for most, it’s important to me to build my own network of writers.

I am a little troubled that it’s essentially self-publishing, something I would normally never do.  Though it is acceptable self-publishing.

I find that it helps me to keep connected to the thoughts and threads that I left hanging the previous day.  I do entries for my live journal and browse those of others over morning coffee while I’m getting ready to work.  Then I do my day-job things while sifting through my own creative thoughts for the day, and around lunch time I get to the writing.  I have been accused of hypergraphia...e-mail, blogging, and fiction pour out of me, at times, at an alarming rate, but there seems no danger of any particular well running dry soon, so for the present, I’m enjoying writing, and reading literary blogs.  I also find that it’s a great way of introducing my own work to worlds of readers who might not otherwise have found it at all...not to mention it’s fun to learn you’ve been quoted somewhere, passed around the world and didn’t even know it....

DNW

Just a quick thought on this topic: so far I have elected to only make previously published works available on my blog, and only in PDF format. Often, when I visit a blog that is mostly full of someone’s creative writing, my first impression is that they are essentially using the web as a medium for self-publication. I think it can erode the author’s credibility to do so (regardless of whether the work is good or not)—in part because the web is such a short attention span medium. Anyone else agree or rebut?

There’s no question that people ought to be careful “publishing” on their sites things they want to publish elsewhere.  I’ve seen some contests and magazines that strictly want exclusive material, and even one’s own personal site counts as pre-published to them.  It’s best, I think, to reprint your material as terms allow after publishing elsewhere.

However, I find that a lot of people are just playing with new ideas or techniques.  Some purely want the self-expression and sense of community, and they’re not seriously concerned about retaining their potential for publishing the same material they’ve got on their blogs.  I don’t know any people who are writing a lot professionally (meaning for pay- not a quality judgement) that don’t handle it the way you do.

When considering things like posting work on the web or self-publishing, it’s important for each writer to know what his hopes and goals for his work really are, because some combinations of activities and venues work logically better together than others.

Thanks for your thoughts, Bud. Interestingly enough, I do know professional writers (and aspirants) who put poems up as blog entries, with no further explanation. It doesn’t do much for me—even if I like the poem. I think some preface, explaining this is an experiment and soliciting feedback, might make it seem less like self-publication and more like an exercise in expression and community.

I used to write a lot of technical articles (for pay) printed in computer magazines. I found blogging was a great way to put a less-than-fully-formed idea out there to solicit feedback. Usually after several comments and a handfull of posts, I had refined my thinking into a publication-worthy piece—and got the benefit of a kind of free research and testing by exposing certain topics and lines of thought to a global community.

I suppose the same could hold true for my creative writing. I guess I just trust a writer’s circle, correspondence course, or some other more formal gathering of like minds to critique my work (including experiments) in an honest and accessible way than I do, as it were, “the world at large.”

I wonder how much of publication-via-blogs is actually experimentation, and how much might be fishing for compliments or enjoying one’s work in print (in any form). Then again, I wonder, too, if the illusion (and sometimes reality) of having an audience can spur a writer to keep writing. Perhaps if you consider blogging nothing more than a personal journal made public, putting one’s creative writing on a blog is less self-publication and more simply a writerly exercise with an audience.

Still, I think the attention span of the internet is vastly lower than that of a journal or book reader curled up on the couch. So, can we honestly expect more than a cursory glance, a first impression—which will invariably laud sensationalism and skip over deeper currents? Can we really expect a blog to work for us as writers to build community by displaying our work? Or are we best left to discussing work (our own and others), posting news, reviewing books, etc.?

If Bud had replied, you’d have gotten a really thoughtful post.  I believe he’s still on vacay.  I know people post for a variety of reasons, and post material in a variety of states.  I would assert that the same variety applies to the attention paid by the online community.  Some online viewers are cursory, some get engaged and exchange as regular visitors.  But, my thoughts were specifically in the area of short fiction and essays that one is serious about selling.  If the online audience forms one’s writing group, I suppose that’s different.  But if we’re allowing that every possible variation in motive and reception can occur online, I think there still may be a point to identifying what one hopes to enjoy or achieve from it before putting work up if one’s serious about promoting that same work commercially.