I hate blogging about blogging and yet I've been thinking lately about how much of a velvet-lined cage blogging can become and have been struck by what happens stats-wise when you alter your blogging methods (or at least what happens to my stats). Generally, I post here about what I'm thinking with an emphasis on literary matters but other things will crop up as well. (Most notably what I'm writing or family history.) As the race in publishing issue (and whitewashing covers) got bigger and bigger last month however, and I posted about it more and more, my stats climbed in all sorts of impressive ways. January was not my largest month (that would be last fall) but the daily numbers did get high, the technorati score got impressive, the RTs were flying on twitter and many comments ensued.
It all got a wee bit heady.
But here's the deal. You can be a writer who blogs but not a blogging writer. By that I mean if the writing doesn't come first then the writing often doesn't happen. And if, in my case, the writing doesn't happen then what the hell am I doing? Everything - all of it - from the very first review at Bookslut (nearly SIX years ago) was about my writing. Blogging was extra, a way to make bibliophile friends and talk informally about books I was reviewing and on and on. You all know the drill. To keep those stats high requires a lot of time and attention to the blog though and even more it wants some obsessing about the blog and I found myself thinking about the blog more than the writing, more than the revision on the AK flying book and more than the outlining/drafting of the wilderness book.
I found myself thinking about blogging all the time.
I understand folks who are excited about their blogs. If this is where you write - if this is where you review - then I can see a lot of ways to be jazzed about your blog. But this is not all that and a bag of chips for me; I had other plans. I HAVE other plans. Which begs the question - just what the hell have I been doing?
Technorati will kick your ass, plain and simple. Dancing your way into the Top 100 Book Blogs and then the Top 100 Entertainment Blogs is a heady feeling. It makes you think you are something special. (Until you realize none of the big sites are even listed.) When you are a writer, especially one with a manuscript that has been bouncing around the publishers for a year, has gone through more than one round of revisions, has seen positive but never positive enough responses, well, if you are that kind of writer then being number one in anything even remotely literary, for any reason, is pretty damn appealing. It can make it so easy to forget about the hard work. It can make the hard work seem, well, just too hard.
That's how I spent a chunk of my January. Then I got the revision done I had promised by agent and I went back to my post-it outline for the wilderness book and started looking for a place to send out my short story. And when I checked my technorati stats the other night I saw that I had fallen off a veritable popularity cliff. I am no longer Top 100 in anything. That gave me pause, because at least it was something, you know? All the rest of this is maybe nothing - it is years spent on maybe nothing. I feel like I'm back on the outside looking in, face pressed against the glass with my manuscript and notes clutched tightly in my hands. And it's always cold on the outside - no matter how old you are, or confidant, or clear-headed about your place in the world. It's always cold outside.
I'm a writer who blogs these days. Again. I dare not even check the effect that will have on my technorati score. I'm just hoping for what it will do for my writing; and what ultimately that will mean to me.
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.chasingray.com/nav-commenters.gif)
February 22
2010
01:28 AM
I will always read your blog - whether you update it every day, or once a week, or heck, once a month. I will always visit because I admire your writing and what you are blogging about is valuable to me.
And once your book is published, I will read that too!