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

[chatona.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of this rant by this Robin Hobb of whom I have never heard either, but from the sound of it, I don't want to, either.

... I can be a writer and still write my blog and I can do both and yeah, blogging takes up some of my time, but, hell. It takes up time I wouldn't spend writing, anyway, because my attention span for writing is somewhere between whut? and oooh, shiney! and I'm constantly doing something or other, anyway. If I sit down to really write, I don't blog in that time, but when I'm not really concentrating on the writing, blogging is only on of a thousand things that'll distract me. I mean. Look, new e-mail! Must check up on it. That's not blogging and it still distracts me.

So I. I don't really see the point. I write when I want to write and when I feel like writing. If I were a professional writer, I'd write professionally and with more discipline and then I'd blog in my free time, because I'd still need time off writing, too. Even though I'd love my job.

'm sorry. I'm kinda tired. I think I'll go train some so that there'll be some contest between you and me for that gold medal? :)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Agree with your every word here. And what a great icon that is!

Happy sleeping - !