Blogging Into the Void

Image by Debby Hudson on Unsplash.

I don't feel like writing a blog post; every idea seems trite and contrived like it had been discussed ad nauseam.

So, I thought I might write about why I blog. Why do this every week when no one is even reading?

I started the blog as an experiment prompted by Shaunta Grimes. She challenged the Ninja Writers community to blog every day as a way to commit to writing every day. She argued it would improve our writing.

There are a few reasons I keep blogging. I'm no longer blogging daily; that was too much of a commitment, mainly because it needs to be published. I still write every day: I write my morning pages seven days a week (except for very special circumstances), and I write for an hour every workday, five days a week unless I'm on holiday. But I write a blog post once a week.

There are several reasons I blog. One is that, just like Shaunta said, it does improve my writing. Even though I'm writing non-fiction on the blog, it has improved my ability to write and finish pieces, publish them and then move on. It's a highly effective tool to be less precious about my writing, which I sorely needed.

In addition to improving my writing, blogging helps me think through things. I've always used writing as a tool to think. I don't have to publish these thought experiments—some of them I don't. I usually start processing my experiences on my morning pages. But I often want to think about these experiences at a higher level, the level of responses (rather than reactions). Knowing something could be read by someone else, writing for an audience helps me sharpen my arguments and clear my thinking.

I also blog in the hope of connecting with readers. No published author who tells you they write for the writing is telling the whole truth. If you only write for writing's sake, why publish? I get positive reinforcement (a little dopamine hit) whenever people tell me that they liked my latest post or when they come up to me and argue with me about what I wrote. It means they've read and thought about it, which is always lovely.

The final reason I blog is for documentation. I sometimes don't remember how I thought about something last year, so I check whether I blogged about it. It's an easy and accessible way to keep in touch with my younger self, to see how my thinking changed over time and what stayed the same. I also imagine the offsprings reading these posts someday and perhaps understanding their mom's thought process. That, to be fair, is something that baffles me still, and sometimes I read the posts for that reason as well.