What I’ve learned so far

Why I didn’t want to blog.

Now that I’ve finished a month of blogging every day, I’m surprised that I managed to do it. I have enough trouble getting myself to write fiction every day. Blogging just seemed like an incredible waste of time. I also didn’t think I could compose a post every day. Besides, what would I write about? And who would read it?

Why I wanted to blog.

Even so, I felt the urge building up to share my reactions to the stories I read, my small successes at applying butt to chair, my attempts to develop a successful writing process. I stumbled on an interesting paper about why people blog, and I suppose I fall into a couple of categories. While the technologies discussed are still changing, I think these five reasons are still valid.

• providing commentary and opinions. I want to share what I am learning by writing down my thoughts about the books and stories I read. I especially want to tell you about the books I like and the stories I love.
• promoting conversation and community. I want a place where I can share things with my various writer friends.
• thinking by writing. This is something I’ve discovered as I started posting: writing out what you think helps clarify your feelings.
• documenting one’s life. Not unless you count the potatoes that keep turning up.
• working out emotional issues. Okay, not this one. Shoot me if I start doing that.

What kicked my butt into action.

I finally got it into my head that you can draft posts and leave them unpublished. One of the reasons I chose WordPress it that it defaults to Draft status when you write a post. There’s also an intermediary status for Review. Best of all, I can schedule a finished post for the future. Finally I stumbled on this post, which advises you to just do it. You can always change it later.

What I’ve learned in my first month.

No one is looking. Well, hardly anyone. Which means I can mess about with things and nobody cares. And I know no one is looking because checking your blog stats is a more seductive time sync than checking emails.

Working on this blog has replaced most of the time I spent surfing the web. And it’s motivated me to read more fiction. Finally, it’s worth doing just so I can finish a small piece of writing every day.

Tomorrow: Going forward.