January 27, 2007

If you are a writer, there are many good reasons not to keep a blog. It wastes both time and material. If I am going to sit down at my desk, I should be working. And, if I’m lucky enough to have an interesting thought, I should save it for a character or a plot or an image. Writing, if you are an old fashioned true believer, is not done lightly or in a casual manner. And yet, Leila Abranel, the narrator of my most recent novel, Stay With Me, found a warm and thoughtful welcome in many, many blogs. Which means, of course, that I met a lot of my readers in a medium I had vowed to keep myself out of. Let other writers blog about their favorite tv shows, their tour schedules and their families. I would be old-fashioned and old-school and keep my writing where it belongs: in books.
Except. But. Well.
So many people keep blogs that are worth both the time and the material they use. There is the sharp edged humor of sdn, the focused drive of Dawn Emerman, the quirky brilliance of Sara Ryan, the elegance of Little Willow and the glittery grandeur of alg. There are others, equally riveting, but you get the point. I don’t think I will learn to write a blog as distinctive as those I’ve mentioned, but I hope I can learn to keep one that isn’t a mind-numbing bore.
I have had an lj for about a year. sdn opened it for me so I could read her protected posts. She was, for a while, my editor, and I wonder if she didn’t open it for me so that I would one day attempt a style of writing for which I may be ill-suited. To push a writer away from her comfort zone is something good editors do. A writer lucky enough to have a smart editor in her life, listens. I’ll see if I can live here, in the outside. If only for just a while.