I have an attraction to the Internet (some would even call it an addiction), which I find necessary in order to blog. I often look for answers on the Internet about what to post, how often, or how to show that I have posted. Cecile’s Writers blog is fairly new so our followers are not really in the thousands. I look at my stats page at least once a day (and if I post then several times a day, which makes me feel the way I used to when I met a guy and waited for his phone call). I can still remember the first 100 hits on the blog – it was exhilarating.
How much is… enough?
At the moment, I’m having a problem with blog frequency, how often should I (or Cecile’s Writers) post?
I have to confess that until I started blogging, I had not read any blogs or followed anyone who had a blog. Now that I have one, I do wonder why I hadn’t done it before. It is just about the most exciting thing I have come across on the Internet. It is better than Twitter, Facebook or Skype. Although comparing the blog that way does seem unfair since I have a love/hate relationship to social media, while I just have an obsessive relationship to blogging. Blogging is more polite and it reaches more people outside my social circle. It reaches people interested in my posts and it reaches fellow writers and/or editors.
Let me explain my dilemma with posting frequency. When I started blogging, I did the required ‘how to blog’ research. The advice was to read blogs, comment and like other blogs and that way, you attract people to your blog. Apparently most blog readers are fellow bloggers. So far so good, logical. In order to understand why people blog you have to be a blogger yourself. I do wonder if there are people outside the world of blogging who are not my family and friends that read my ranting on the Internet. If you are one such individual, I would love to know why you read blogs and do not post yourself, write me a line, I’m just really curious.
I started reading blogs and I found that a lot of people have really neat things to say. I also found out that you can blog about anything and that there are certain sorts of blogs that are less attractive to me… to each his own, I suppose. I tend to read blogs about 2 or 3 times a week and I like to post about once a week.
Quality or Quantity?
Each morning my inbox has about 40 or more unread emails, most of which are new posts from bloggers I follow. I often open the ones whose titles jump out at me (this is also the way I read blogs on the web). It might seem unfair and I might loose a couple of followers with this admission. But bear with me a little while longer, I cannot read everything on the Internet and I think that others might feel the same way. I do not feel hurt if you throw away my post unopened in your inbox since my blog that day may just not be eye-catching enough.
Then again, my frequency of reading and posting has steadily increased. Who is to say that I might not end up posting every day and reading so many posts that I would even go to the bathroom with my PDA just to catch up on my reading.
I tend to subscribe to the quality rather quantity idea. I could post whatever comes to mind (I sometimes do) but I put quite a bit of thought into my posts, and they are edited. The more I write, the more I find that I have more to say. Writing is usually like that. But as Ursula K. Le Guin said in an interview with Bill Moyers on the movie version of The Lathe of Heaven
“…so I sit around and wait, as it were. My jobs, when I’m not writing, like this period in my life. I finished a couple of novels. I just have to wait for the well to refill.” (min. 13-56-14’08) (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7893036627918854330 )
I, too, need time for ideas to brew, to sit and ponder and get inspiration. Waiting to post is essential if I want to write a good post. Sometimes, though, the more I wait, the less I have to say, and the less ideas I have, the less inspiration I get. It is a tight rope to walk – a thin line between waiting for inspiration and missing your queue.
Sofia
(Part 2 will be posted next week where I’ll argue the flip-side of all this.)
