The other day I was cleaning out one of my old blogs. One of them. Yes, I’ve had many over the years. I dabbled in an anonymous blog, attempted a serial story blog, played with Tumblr, created one for Amazon Affiliate sales with Blogger, started up a free Wordpress.com site, bought a domain name, and recently launched a book review site.
Sigh. What was I thinking?
Sure blogging is a great way to stretch our creative minds. It’s also a great distraction, along with Twitter, writing groups, author sites, book clubs, Facebook, critique groups, forums, Etsy (aka: porn for women) and the latest, Pinterest. Each of these items can help grow our platform, but they all pull us away from our main objective - to write fiction.
As I was cleaning posts off my old blog, I came across one that gave my readers an update on my writing life. Healing Touch hadn’t been released yet and Off Leash was a WIP still listed as “Untitled”. There were others. Some I’ve completely forgotten about.
I read through that post and noted my excitement regarding each story. I couldn’t wait to get them out and have readers get to know my characters.
My jump drive contains approximately thirty WIP ideas. I’ve started roughly seven to ten of those. Looking back I know I spent more time blogging and surfing then I did writing. What happened? How did I get myself so far removed from the fiction?
I know we all get into this position in some form or other. We look back on the weekend and know we had ample opportunity to write. The kids were away, house clean, and groceries bought. We had hours and hours to write, but we didn’t.
A writer writes. Having a blog and Twitter account with high follower numbers is great. I’m glad I have this audience. Unfortunately, my free time has become dominated by this quest. I know many, many authors through my activity online. At what point will I have to remove myself from their company because I am not an author putting out new stories - merely someone who hangs out with them? I tweet, blog, Facebook, and surf writer blogs. The definition of an author contains none of these words.
I’d like to thank Tonya for having me as a guest on her blog today. It’s a great opportunity for me to ask - have any of you ended up in this position? How do you balance writing activities with actual writing? Be sure to leave a comment to be eligible to win a copy of each of Jenna's novels!
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I'm a fulltime mom, wife, sister, & friend. Throw in a little housework, an irritating lapdog, the need to watch every episode of Forensic Files & I guess you could call me a busy woman. There are just not enough hours in the day. My escape is writing. I hope you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.~ Jenna Anderson
