Why Blog?
I’ve heard that blogging is dead. Yet here I am, launching a mostly empty website with, gasp, a BLOG.
Podcasts, articles, newsletters, and books that I’ve read claim that blogs are a thing of the past because people are overwhelmed by content. Then I read something else that says, no, don’t worry, blogging is alive and well. Who to believe?
I gave up trying and started writing a blog. I’m not putting any pressure on myself to write one post a week or to write them in advance and schedule content. I see that social media is full of people who are working very hard to plan blog posts that coincide with project launches or with specific goals in mind as they try to boost their following. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how they are doing that.
I’m giving it a try because I like to write. I have an MFA in writing from Vermont College that I worked very, very hard to earn. But like many with degrees in writing, I didn’t do much of anything with it. I used my skills to teach my students how to become better writers, but that was never the intent of why I wanted an MFA. I thought it would help me become a published writer. As with any art, if you don’t put in the hours the goal will never happen. I am not writing and don’t have that stack of published YA novels that I once envisioned. But I have a blog now!
“ In my imagination, morning pages should be written at a sunny desk while listening to the dawn chorus. Not going to happen.”
This will be my writing practice. I thought about doing morning pages and even reread Julia Camerons’ book The Artist’s Way. Unless I wanted to get up way earlier than my son, which never seems to work, I couldn’t figure out how to do those morning pages in the morning. Watching PBS kids while eating breakfast and trying to write just seemed to be a stressful way to do morning pages. In my imagination, morning pages should be written at a sunny desk while listening to the dawn chorus. Not going to happen.
A blog post will let me write about my art and writing practice whenever I have time and I might even have an audience who will stop in and read some of my posts. I have lots of ideas of what I’d like to write about and many of them have to do with art and motherhood. I’d also like a few where I can be a total geek about adhesives and vintage sheet music. But again, this is a no pressure blog so who knows where it will go?
