Writing...

[fajrdrako]

Blogging. Ever since Robin Hobb wrote her piece on how writers should be getting on with the act of writing, not messing around on journaling, I've been struggling with a thread of guilt. Especially since certain people like maaseru have pointed to the article, and said, "It's absolutely right." And I think guiltily: "if I spend x number of minutes writing LJ instead of fic...."

But it isn't a simply syllogism. I can write a ten-minute LJ entry, easily, and do it often. I can't write fic in segments ten minutes. Usually it takes ten minutes to figure out what my scene is and where I'm going with it. Or sometimes I can, but it isn't the same sort of ten minutes. Fiction has its own parameters.

When there was no blogging in my life or anyone else's, I still kept journals. The difference is that no one but me saw them. (Well, except that time my husband started reading my pre-marriage journals to see what I'd said about him, and what a bad idea that was.) I spent daily time in writing letters to friends - I had dozens of pen-pals. I was in apazines. (Many apazines.) It was all the same blogging impulse.

I remind myself of this, when I find myself feeling guilt for writing in LJ and enjoying it. I see no reason to decide that one form of writing is better than another - any more than one kind of reading is better than another, or one kind of movie or TV show over another.

LJ is fun, and it's a stress reliever, and right now it's a much-needed lifeline to the world outside my apartment. Of course I love it.

sartorias's LJ got me thinking about this again. I'm trying to live without guilt about the things I love to do: it makes sense that some find LJ a pleasure in itself, and other people don't.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My problem is then I end up feeling guilty for not blogging enough. This is largely a matter of having too many of them. There's the main blog (http://riseagain.net/wp). There's the LJ, which I use for memes, my rare writing stuff, anything I really want a response on because of the LJ community factor, and the rare things I want to friendslock. There's the travel/expat blog which my husband and I started when we moved abroad, to tell friends and family about it (I didn't want to give the main blog's address to all my family and certainly not to coworkers; though it's not particularly off-color or incendiary, it's *mine*). It's supposed to be for both of us, but I do most of the writing. And there's the spoonriverrail writing project. It's those last two I feel bad about not updating more often.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Too bad we can't spread time out more - eke more than 24 hours out of a day. Or write faster. I am, or used to be, a quick and fluid writer. Sometimes the fluidity fails me.

And yes, blogging is one way to clear out the webcobby brain and get the words going when they're slow to come.

It's been wonderful over the past week: giving me a focus besides staring at the ceiling.