Is Blogging a Deadly Addiction
Blogging may be a deadly addition according to this article, especially if you're a journalist or someone who thinks that if you're not always on that you might miss something. Some truth to it methinks. All the time blogging and not writing could squeeze your already precious time so that that stress you feel comes from leaving your characters alone. How long can they live without you breathing life into them? Will they ever grow if you don't pay attention to them? Will they eat? Will they find true happiness, a girlfriend, a lover, a life, the fresh packet of underwear you left for them in the chapter you haven't written yet? Is the blogging bug blocking your book? I hope not, but the other day, my protagonist refused to speak to me, and my antagonist locked up my "e" key. I promised I'd blog less and write more. They forgave me for now, but am I failing them?
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5 comments:
I disagree with that premise. The article itself provided the *real* answer: it's not blogging that's the problem, obviously, it's the "18-hour-a-day, non-stop lifestyle" that leaves no time for rest, exercise, or eating properly. You're out chopping wood and digging in the yard a lot — as long as you're not living on junk food, I think you'd be one of the last people to have to worry about it.
If blogging is contributing to your stress level, stopping would be the intelligent thing. For me, it's one place where I can unload some of the stress that comes with living in a free-range insane asylum. If I can't escape, at least I can entertain myself and a handful of readers by documenting their escapades.
I was on vacation last week and wrote maybe a paragraph of fiction. (The FAR Future episode I posted was in the can a couple weeks ago.) I was online for maybe an hour, let alone blogging, for the entire week. If not blogging was going to unblock me, I should have unloaded a few thousand words. As it is, I started a blog post last night and got a signal from Olga this morning. No content, just a ping, but I suspect there will be more to come.
So...Blogs don't kill people, stress kills people. Blogs just sit around and watch.
If I remember, you were at the coast. Fish biting?
I didn't fish myself, but I saw some people surf fishing and saw the tail of one fish protruding from a bucket. So they might have been biting, but not a lot. The Boy was looking for his fishing gear at my mom's, but remembered it all got brought up here a trip or two ago.
Hey,
Saw your link on Dorothy L.
I too posted a link to that article. More and more, I'm thinking that blogging is an addiction - an extension of internet addiction - and the stress to keep up a blog can be deterimental to one's health.
Months back, I had a sit down with agent Donald Maass and he said he thinks the problem with blogs is that it "scratches the itch" to write - meaning we spend it here and not on our WIPs.
These are just some of the reasons I'm taking a three month long break from blogging this summer.
I suppose that if you scratch the itch with a solid 500 words (or more per day) before touching the blog, you can rule the blog instead of the blog ruling you.
Don't know, but that Maass guy is one smart agent.
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