Saturday, September 13, 2003

To Blog or Not to Blog For a professional writer, maintaining a weblog might be dangerous... What text -- and what hours -- go into the blog that "should" go into writing that puts bread on the table? How do you juggle the two? Science fiction author William Gibson has been blogging sporadically, but just decided even that was too much: "I've found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I've most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I'm doing this I'm definitely not writing a novel -- that is, if I'm still blogging, I'm definitely still on vacation. "I've always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn't want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid's been left off." I've been feeling "on vacation" for the past few months myself, but I'm trying to steer my blog entries to topics that will be "recyclable" the next time I teach a course about online publishing, as well as using the whole experience to keep educating myself about the people, technology and issues involved. No novel-writing for me... But maybe some of these blog entries will make their way into the book about procrastination that I've been threatening to write for years and years... 3:11:58 PM

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