Why I hate Blogging (Also, nice to meet you.)
Okay, “hate” is a strong word, but it got your attention, didn’t it? I’m pretty sure it did because that’s what ten years of blogging on a now-defunct Wordpress blog teaches you.
It encourages you to craft eye-catching, polarizing titles for your posts. It forces you to brainstorm the “Top 10” reasons for your next listicle. It demands that you update the tags on your older posts to encourage the best SEO optimization in the hopes of gaining that theoretical someone’s attention. Worst of all, it takes time away from other writing projects you could be working on (like that novel you’ve been working on for years), and you become a content creation mill instead of the artist you want to be.
Granted, blogging is great for some people. It can provide a steady writing discipline, a way to stay in the loop about certain industries, a chance to earn some side income, and so much more. I’m glad that I decided to give blogging a try back in 2010. It helped me write the short stories that made up my remastered collection. But in the end, trying to make so many weekly posts was just unsustainable in the face of my then-full-time job in Japan and my greater ambitions.
Even then, as an author trying to build an audience and with limited time currently on their hands, I’m in a bind. Shouting to the void is no good, and doing nothing is even worse. If you don’t know who I am and where I stand on things, how will you even think of buying my books now and in the future? I have to offer something, it seems, but if you’re hoping for a weekly, monthly, or even yearly newsletter of sorts, I’m sorry to say you won’t find one. My compromise is that I’ll post news and other musings on this blog mostly when I feel like it. For other random thoughts, you’ll have to go to my Twitter page. If you want to ask me a question, ask it, and I’ll (probably) answer it.
Contrary to what is said about most writers and introverts, I do like talking to people. I just need a bit of me-time afterwards. Boundaries and spoons and that sort of thing.
I also don’t like the idea of using Substack or charging people access to writing news or my musings. I know it works for some authors as a means of income, but it doesn’t sit well with me that those with more means are rewarded while those who aren’t are left out of the conversation. It’s why I stopped offering monthly tiers on my Ko-fi page back when I was doing tarot readings on Twitch.
Anyway, sorry for the grumpiness in what’s traditionally supposed to be a very upbeat introductory blog post. I promise I’m a lot more pleasant than what you might be finding here. Pleased to meet you, and I hope you’ll stick around.