A friend, Jeffe Kennedy, updates her blog every single weekday. You'll notice I don't. We were chatting yesterday about a group blog we've both signed on for - the Word Whores. There are seven of us. We’ll each have a day of the week to post our musings. The group came up with a list of 52 topics for the year that we would each write to. Yeah, there's a story here regarding how all of this came about, but it's not mine to tell...this is Allison Pang's (as opposed to Frankenstein's) monster. That and I suspect the story of how the Word Whores got started will be part of our 1/1/11 kick off of the blogsite. More on that as events warrant.
Back to my envy of Jeffe's disciplined blog posting schedule. I'd made some comment that I'd get started writing my blog posts in advance so they could be scheduled to post automatically. That way, my chances of missing a posting were lower. Jeffe seemed surprised by that - she was just going to blog on her scheduled days as they happened and wasn't I disciplined to write my posts ahead of time.
I quickly disabused her of that notion, pointing to my sporadic updates of my own blog. I so envy people who seem to be able to arrange their lives in such a way that they can sit down every single day and actually pull words from their heads. My life defies that sort of thing. As soon as I say “Henceforth, I shall rise at this hour, sit my butt down in my office chair, and WRITE”, life replies “Oh yeah?” and throws some crisis into my path that requires I be someplace else at precisely the time I’d fenced off for work. Jeffe gently pointed out that if I wanted to be one of ‘those’ people who could sit down at a specific time each day to write, I had to be willing to disappoint my friends and loved ones by saying no some of the time. I had to get to a point, she suggested, wherein I could say I can’t do x – this is a work day for me. “It seems like some people just don’t consider writing serious work,” Jeffe noted.
Oh. Including me, apparently. If I took my own work and time seriously, I’d guard it. I began seeing how I’d created (and how I continue to contribute) to the problem. Okay. Issue identified. Now. To change…
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I'm glad you thought I was gentle - here, I was afraid I'd been a little harsh with you. I am militant about the fencing off. And I think the universe likes to mess with us that way. As soon as we resolve on something, it likes to test us and see if we really mean it...
ReplyDeleteIf you figure out how to blog consistently, lemme know, k?
ReplyDeleteUsually, if I'm fired up to write, it's all about my novel. My blog? Pft. What blog? ~eek~
Like you, I have a wee bit of envy for the week-daily dedications of Jeffe, and anyone else who manages a daily insightful post. Wonder if her natural inclinations as an essayist lead to blogging as her logical platform?
For the record, I think the essayist-me totally feeds into the blog, leaving fiction-me free to ramble. Note that I've written no essays in ages.*
ReplyDelete*not since starting the blog, in point of fact.
I try to schedule my post because sometimes I can't stick to a schedule. And like you life likes to laugh as I try to stick to a writing schedule. Though I've been managing to write for an hour at night every night. Start small. BTW I have a hard time telling the people in my life no.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't always a question of fencing off time or of saying no to people. A big part of my problem is that I can't imagine anyone really wants to know what kind of crap is rattling around my brain on any given day of the week. :D
ReplyDelete