- Writing anything is a process. Whether I am writing out a grocery list or a novel, I require a plan and expect a conclusion. And so, my children, if you interrupt this process at the beginning, you will go hungry and I will type nothing but a title page. If you interrupt this process in the middle, I will forget the eggs and the plot twists. But if you stay the heck out of my closet where I’m desperately trying to focus and stop interrupting me asking for loose change, I will get to post my blog for tomorrow, all finished, and still have time to make your dinner. Go. Away.
- My blog is a child, and it’s entering the “terrible twos”. Yours, oh girlfriends of mine, have diapers – some have a leash and kibble bowl – but this child glows in the dark. It requires a regular feeding of sarcasm, wit and reality and it will spit it all back into my face when I least expect it. And laugh at me. It will only make into a fun story when it’s good and ready, and I can sit up all night attempting to coerce it into literary obedience. But this one has a mind of it’s own. I had five kids already. I should have seen it coming.
- Subscribers and commenters cannot be underestimated. They are the bread and butter of a blog. It doesn’t matter how unique or wonderful the writing is, no one cares if Facebook likes it or if you’ve got a really lovely business card. If people aren’t feeling compelled to push a button and respond to a blog, this work will never be published. Money is about numbers, and numbers are the only thing they count. If you’re a Subscriber, thank you, you get to be the bread, you crazy croissant, you. If you want to be the butterer-upper, though, you have to leave a comment in the box down there….
- However, what counts the most to a blogger is her ♥audience♥. That’s a different perspective altogether. We want to make a difference. A small one to a single person is enough. Enough to feel that a love affair with language can be used to touch someone else’s heart or produce a smile.
- And who doesn’t need a smile in their day?
- Blogging is not great literature. I can start sentences with “And”, “But”, and any foolish sentence fragment I prefer because The Blogging Fairy said I could. Bloggers prefer to write the way they chat and daughters earning degrees in Communications should not fall all to pieces when a sentence begins with “Because” and ends with “I said so”.
- Bloggers do, occasionally, leave their laptops with a babysitter and go off on wild tangents in order to acquire new “zest” for writing. Some people call it writer’s block. I prefer the term, “procrastination fascination”. If you see me deep cleaning the basement because I wanted to find a photo from 1983 that was in an album in a box behind the Christmas decorations and the discarded nightstands that need to go to Goodwill (even if I stood on one to reach the rafters where some old flowerpots were housing seashells) it’s safe to assume that I won’t be resurfacing for a while. And your blog is going to be late this week. Sorry.