Blog. Blog. Blog.

Writers are expected to market themselves, to appear everywhere electronic with blog after blog after blog, which eventually turns into blah, after blah, after blah. The blog becomes diluted writing not usually worth reading, its sole purpose to show an update on a writers website, so that search engines crawl to it, and by chance a reader impulsively clicks Buy This Book. Or perhaps maybe the reader remembers the writer’s name and buys later. It’s all about name recognition.

As someone who rarely, if ever, writes without revising, I’m no Sir Blog-A-Lot. I know of course that I must market my novel Where the River Splits and that blogging is, in essence, marketing. But blogging can become demeaning, where quantity trumps quality, and words spew forth. The publish button is pushed. Done! (My unwanted advice to pathological bloggers –write each word longhand first.)

Not all bloggers are bad of course. Those who can blog-publish quality writing every day deserve praise and respect. For example, I was pleasantly surprised by an old friend’s blog from France, her optimistic, enthusiastic, and conversational style in Soar-Dream-France. Likely, I am influenced by my personal connection to her. But that might be the point. Aren’t most bloggers writing for a limited audience of friends and acquaintances?

But professional, or semi-professional, published writers who are expected to continually market-blog risk neglecting their craft. For me, and I suspect many others, writing to a daily audience is unsustainable and, frequently, bad writing is blog-published. The writing meant to be the seeds of a story, a rough draft, is blog-published. The writing meant as a warm-up to the real work of writing, perhaps the next chapter of a novel is… blog-published. Does this blogging help the writer? Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll try to address that subject in my next blog, but don’t expect it anytime soon.

Note: I have modified my position on blogging. See "Blogging Reconsidered."