Exhibitionism

Why blogging: indeed is it some form of exhibitionism? Or should we ask first why writing? A first observation is that many people can’t write, or rather they can write, for they learned at school, but cannot imagine writing more than their name in the right box, or the equivalent. In other words they cannot even start writing a few lines of a fictional story, or comment thereon.

For those who enjoy writing, for their own pleasure, or their children, or their friends, then it is inevitable that at some point one wonders about widening the audience. Hence blogging, which is – was? – the mean to publicise, usually some short text, of fiction of even non fiction, some reflection on current event, perhaps, or something about a hobby, a favourite dog, gardening etc.

Regular bloggers are often addicted to their art, it becomes a lifelong activity, and one can be both addicted to blogging and an addicted follower. Blogging is a great way to share ideas, to test a book idea, to publish short stories without the complications of true publishing. Indeed some bestsellers started as tales on a blog (The Martian).

For us who have been blogging for some years, it is not uncommon to have several blogs, for example a photoblog as well as one dedicated to long form, fictional or non fiction. Platforms like Substack are oriented towards continuous communication between readers and writers, beyond comments and “like” buttons, for example the very beautiful Rising Tide Foundation, which is dedicated to history and geopolitics, with high quality, well researched content, and plenty of scope for commentary. 

Creation

I used to have a photoblog and later made the decision to only share my own photos in the context of other posts on my main blog. On the other hand most of my writing is being tested on the blog, to seek readers’ reaction, before moving to another level of editing and publishing. That way blogging is a step in the creative process, which may lead to a choice between investing more time in a project (novel or other long form work) and moving on to another project. For me, as a writer, blogging is a quiet way to work towards that mythical first draft, leaving space to change my mind on whether the project is worthwhile.

Is this a good use of time? For serious writing, that is a real investment in a book, there are other ways to play, prepare, draft, edit and ultimately publish. Tools abound to do just that. Giving that blogging is time-consuming too, is the writer better off learning to use Scrivener effectively? I do both, for planning, develop a timeline, sketch characters, research locations, Scrivener is very helpful.

Concentration

Another consideration is that being tempted to publish segments of long form work on a blog may become an obstacle to ever finishing the project. Good writing requires concentration, isolation even, whereas the blogging process is the opposite, inviting for response and quick feedback. So it may be that our love of blogging should be moderated by intervals when the serious writing, editing, planning, takes place, which boils down to a time management question: the well known dilemma of how much time to spend on line, as opposed to quiet reading and writing, indeed meditating.

Prompts

To conclude with the original question, is blogging exhibitionism, one has to answer, if not moderated with vigour, it may become just that without a doubt. I have ended up running two blogs, one for relatively long form work, and the other for shorter posts, for example in response to the many prompts on offer. I tend to work on the former after intervals of off line work, so far it seems to work for me. How do you work?

Quote

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (pp. 29-30). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.