Is there a point to this?
So, I was talking to my wife about trying to blog again, and her assessment was pretty blunt: “Blogging is dead.” I can’t say I disagree.
Even at the outset of the reboot, I wondered whether the advice to authors about blogging is just not reflective of where we are culturally right now. I mentioned that you shouldn’t use BookTok as your arbiter of what’s worth your time, but the truth is that people use TikTok in far greater numbers than read tiny blogs by semi-obscure authors.
So where does this leave us? In a position where I wonder if writing these makes any real difference. I have lots of analytics available to me, but I check none of them. I’ve never been the kind of writer who looks at his reviews. I’ve known too many authors whose entire self-image hangs on keeping an average rating of four stars or higher. I refuse to be that kind of writer.
At the same time, I hate waste, and wasted time and effort is as bad as any other kind of excess. So if there’s no good to be gleaned from the activity of blogging… why do it?
I’ll probably grapple with this for a while. The question will be whether I write blog entries during that grappling period. I hate to quit when I just restarted, but that may be exactly what I do. Not being married to the format helps.