It’s a question I ask myself often lately. When I first started my blog way, way back—2000, in fact, though you will not find archives going back that far, because as soon as I sold my first book I deleted blog 1.0, too personal—it was partly out of the frustration of being an unpublished writer with no audience. Now, starting a blog did not get me an audience, at first, but it gave me at least the partial satisfaction of putting my words out there. When blog sites first started adding the comment feature, I remember thinking, “Why would anyone want to do that? If someone is dying to respond to something I wrote, they can email me.” I didn’t get and could not foresee how interactive blogs would become, either the positive sort of connection that would come with it or the negative, reactionary comment culture that would also happen.
Of course I eventually went with the flow, turned on comments, duplicated the blog over at LiveJournal where many YA writers hung out, and began religiously reading my friends page and commenting myself. It was exciting to be part of the greater conversation about writing and the business, and back then, blogs and listservs were really the only way to do that. Now, that conversation has opened up and a lot of it has moved to Twitter. I don’t have time to read and comment on blogs the way I used to, and that seems to have led to fewer comments on mine, or folks do their commenting on Twitter and Facebook where my blog feeds—or commenting has been replaced with sharing, liking, and reTweeting.
Also, maybe because I’m not talking as much about the inner workings of my heart or the writing life as I used to, there is not that much that compels response. Most of my posts these days are links with a few thoughts thrown in, or updates on what I’m doing that readers might want to know about, and of course the ever-necessary work of reminding the world I’m a novelist with novels out that they may wish to purchase so that I can keep having a career. Let’s not forget or pretend to forget about that.
The changes in my blog habits are not accidental. Prior to being published and in the time right after, I was eager to share myself, and very open about my life. It felt natural to share myself; I believe most writers write at least in part to be known and understood. If no one wanted to publish and respond to my book, at least people could know and respond to me. (Are writers generally more in need of approval, attention, affirmation than normal people?) However, after being published, I’ve slowly come to develop a contrary need for privacy and the protection of my inner life.
Once you’re published, your books—as personal as they may be—don’t belong to you anymore the same way that they belonged to you while you were writing them. A piece of yourself also no longer belongs to you. The public person who goes out on tour and to conferences and trade shows is you, and it isn’t you. It belongs to your publisher, to teachers and librarians, to booksellers, readers, fans. Of course it’s great if this person is also authentically you, and I hope it is, and I think it is for me. I am her, it is me, etc. But because of this new layer of energy that comes with being a public person, even on a small scale in this little pond, I’ve gotten a lot more protective of what’s left. (And I understand why writers who are much, much more famous than me may sometimes come across as cold, curt, or unresponsive. If, with my career, I feel this layer of stress and the desire to self-protect, I can’t begin to imagine how it feels for someone dealing with real fame.)
So, what does that leave to blog about? And I mean thoughtful blogs, not the kind of micro-blasts that Twitter is so good at handling. It’s great for keeping readers up to date on Being a Writer stuff, yes. I’ll keep doing that. I could and have blogged about politics but I don’t really enjoy that, in the long run. Same thing with religion, unless it’s more about an aspect of personal faith, but that has started to fall into the “what I want to protect” category. That leaves culture and pop culture, lifestyle, and miscellany, and I’m not sure I have time or desire to add anything useful or interesting about that stuff (that can’t be handled on Twitter) when there is already so much noise. I do like to sometimes write about writing, and interview other authors, and I’ll keep doing that, too.
I would sort of love to go back to the carefree days when I didn’t worry that everything I posted could be seen as: too shallow, too deep, too political, politically unaware, too personal, impersonal, uninformed, over-informed, redundant, name-droppy, not name-droppy enough (i.e. not supportive of my fellow authors), whiny, ego-mad, falsely humble, etc etc etc. Of course, those were the days not very many people were reading my blog so none of it mattered. Maybe it still doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m thinking much too hard about this, as is my habit.
What do you think? If you’ve had a blog for awhile, how has your concept of what it is changed? Do you read and comment on blogs the way you used to? What are some of your favorite blogs…people who you think do it well? How do you see blogging in the future?
