Case in point…

As writers, we know that blogging takes away from our writing. It’s a simple time factor thing: time spent updating your own blog, and surfing around other blogs (following link after link) is time you could be spending working on your manuscript.

For awhile now, I’ve notice a number of other writers vent their frustrations on their blogs, heh, about being ‘stuck’—and if you’ve been checking in here semi-frequently, you know I’ve been a card carrying member of that ‘non-producing’ club for several weeks, now.

Months ago, (and I’ll admit right now, my memory is leaky) Maud Newton posted about her own frustrations re her writing output, and had a friend ask her if she was a ‘blogger’ or a ‘writer’. It put things in perspective for her. Today, while poking around her site I picked up this link to Justin Peck’s Beautiful Stuff blog, where he’s “transcribed a small portion of the excellent Literary Friendships discussion between Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon in which they talk about why they feel blogging is bad for fiction writers.

Again, from Maud’s site, she links to a other author’s weighing in on both sides of the pro/con blogging issue:

Background reading:

• Writers A.M. Homes and Robert Olen Butler say they'd never blog. Neil Gaiman weighs in on the other side of it.

• Neuromancer author William Gibson stopped blogging in 2003, saying, "I've found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I've most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I'm doing this I'm definitely not writing a novel -- that is, if I'm still blogging, I'm definitely still on vacation." He revived the site after the last election. Now he blogs irregularly.

• Salon readers denounce Waldman's "display of self-justifying narcissism." Jane Smiley and others leap to her defense.

Interesting stuff. I see authors like Alison Kent and Sheila Viehl, blog regularly on issues that stir discussion (or controversy. ::smile:: ) and yet their phenomenal writing output hasn’t been negatively impacted, at least they don’t allow it to. I guess it’s one of those either you got it or you don’t talents. Either blogging impedes your output, or it feeds it.

I’ve heard writers say that blogging feeds their creativity, it’s a warm up to the real stuff, or makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something writing wise, if nothing else. That used to be my line too, besides the fact that I really enjoy blogging. But now I wonder if it isn’t draining away the ‘liquid’ of memory, experience, emotion, before it gels into something that I would normally use in my writing, the way Ayelet contends.

Or it could be the introspective ‘navel grazing’ and analyzing involved in writing a blog, is different from the thought process that goes into fleshing out a story. The blog is more wysisyg--‘here’s an idea, think about it and or be entertained by it.’ In writing a book, it’s: here are people, and a theme (not stated that blatantly though), think about them, love them or hate them, feel what they feel. *Remember* your own experiences through them.’ It’s bigger, vaguer, layered, squishier. gg . It stays fluid.

Another concern is, a lot of the writer blogs I read, involve a lot of discussion, advice and insight into the background/business stuff of writing. Mabye *some* of that stuff I don't really need to know, or dwell on, right now-- the marketing, the hooks, the editorial biases, etc--maybe that *knowledge* has led to a "face was pressed against the glass so tight I could no longer tell I was at a window" result--as Jordan's terrific hubby suggested to her (Mar22 entry)--and now I'm *over*-thinking plot, character and ultimate target audience, whether it be agent, editor, readers, instead of Just. Writing. The. Damn. Book.

I’m rambling, aren’t I? Time to check out.