Once about every three or four months, I go into social hibernation, for a couple weeks at least. I don’t know why I do this, but I’ve learned that it’s necessary for my mental health and creativity to just go with it. It’s not great for my online friendships, not great for “building my writing platform” (whatever that means), but it is great for me personally. But I still haven’t worked out how to keep up with the online things that need keeping up while I’m away.
Anyway, I’m trying to get back to it. I’ve been thinking about how I spend my time and what I want to spend it on. Creatively, I’m a writer, will always be a writer, but when I spend too much time on writing-related etcetera, my whole creative life suffers. I need time to work with my hands, to work with tangible things instead of just ideas, and I need time to just think. I feel like the content of this blog is focused on such a narrow part of my life, and full of too many lengthy book reviews; I never meant for this blog to become a book review blog, but at the same time, I do want it to be about books and writing.
I dunno. Sometimes I think about posting about everything I’m doing, making it more personal. I know that I don’t want Badgerish.Net to be a “writing tips” blog, for a few reasons. One, I have pitifully few finished manuscripts, so I don’t feel confident giving writing advice; two, I have this funny idea that it’s counter-intuitive for a writer of fiction to build an audience of other writers looking for writing help. I want to get to know other readers, because that’s who I’m interested in, honestly.
Which leads me to wonder, what do readers like to read on an author blog? For myself, I know I don’t like to read negative, angry political talk or diatribes. What I do like to read is harder to say, because the truth is, I rarely see authors writing about anything other than writing on their blogs. This is helpful to me as a writer, but I wonder how well they’re serving the readers of their fiction. On my current favorite blog, The World According to Maggie, Maggie Stiefvater talks not only about her books, but posts playlists she listened to while writing, pictures of herself with her bagpipes, photos from her travels, and what’s generally going on in her life. She doesn’t post much “writing advice” only of interest to other writers; she writes about things that her readers want to know.
Enough rambling. I’m back now, and trying to catch up on stuff. I’ve been working on Story A Day May, and even though I haven’t written a short story every single day (not by a long shot), I’ve written a few, which is a few more than I’ve written in the past three or so years. Maybe longer. I still don’t love writing short stories, but I think the element of instant gratification is good for the soul.
