I’ve seen people say that writers shouldn’t blog about writing, because a) it’s boring to people who aren’t writers and b) if you’re unpublished/new no one cares what you think or should trust your advice.
On the other hand, half of the reason for blogging about writing is because putting my thoughts into a coherent order helps me understand things better, just like writing papers for school did a surprisingly long time ago. Writing up something makes me think about it more.
And let’s face it, I’m not going to write little essays if I’m the only one who reads them. (Ok, putting them on my blog still doesn’t mean anyone but me reads them. But some of you do!) It’s the same reason I want to blog about content strategy on a more work-related blog if I can carve the time into my schedule.
I do feel weird doing craft posts, even though I should do them to make myself think about stuff. I’m happy to babble about process until blood comes out your ears, but there’s a fine line between discussing craft and giving advice, and I try to avoid giving advice because most of my writing friends who read my blog are farther along the skill ladder than I am. That said, I’ve got a list of topics to work through in the next couple months.
This post was inspired by Janice Hardy’s post Why Blogging about Writing Can Help Writers Improve.
I’ve seen a lot of posts lately from aspiring writers about what their blog *should* be about, and it’s amazing the pressure on writers who want to blog about their journey. We are in a world where Twitter and Facebook limit what we want to see. Go BLOG. Write what you want. If people like you for who you are, awesome. If they don’t, then why fake it for them?
Yes. You read so much about platform and promotion, but no one wants to read promotion all the time. And if you’re a fiction writer, and you’re not focused on, say, a historical era or a specific country, then what’s your platform?
So we can blog about anything we like.