A Summer Short: On the Value of Blogging

Frustrated Woman at Computer With Stack of PaperThere are times when I wonder why I keep posting on this blog. Some months I’m pleased with the readership, and I watch the statistics climb day after day. Other months, the numbers plummet, and I wonder if I’m so boring no one will ever read what I write again.

Some weeks the ideas pop into my head effortlessly and my words flow freely. Other weeks, every sentence comes painfully, and I write and rewrite until I finally think I’ve said something . . . but maybe not.

It is in the nature of writing to be a solitary occupation, one fraught with self-doubt and angst.

And then, on a day when my writing has come particularly slowly, I see an old friend who tells me, “I love your blog! It’s so fun to keep up with what you’re doing.”

Or someone posts a comment, then a few days later, the same person posts another. And in a few weeks’ time, I feel like I have a new BFF.

Or I read something in another blog that touches my heart, as I wrote about last week from Baby Boomers and More.

Or I sell a revamped post to Chicken Soup for the Soul or another publisher, and I make a little money. Someone wants to pay me for what I write!

Or someone asks me when I’m finally going to publish my Oregon Trail books. (I don’t know, folks. The drafts aren’t as good as I can make them yet. But they will get published.)

Some social media experts say blogging is a form of marketing. Some call it “building your author’s platform.”

I call it forcing myself to write to deadline . . . and hopefully to find some companions along my journey.

I call it an opportunity to reflect on my world and the people I encounter.

And so I’ll keep writing this blog a while longer.

What do you do because it’s “good for you”?

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