Sometimes I find blogging really difficult.
It’s not that I don’t feel like I have a lot to say, about any number of things — writing, books, fashion, pop culture, politics, publishing, movies — but so often, I allow myself to get caught up in this web of blogger’s doubt. My fingers hover over the keyboard, and my post remains blank. Many questions whirl about in my head:
Should I blog about this?
Can I blog about this?
Is this too uncool to blog about?
How many hits will this get?
How can I craft this to get MORE hits?
Will this post anger anyone?
Am I blogging enough?
Am I blogging about the right things?
You get the idea. And, from what I’ve gathered by observing others, I’m not alone.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the questions of what we should blog about and who will read it and what our stats are and what they should be, that it becomes equally as easy to lose the joy of blogging. It becomes a chore rather than a pleasant task. When we think about our blogs, we stress out and tense up, rather than get excited about generating new content.
That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Generating new content. Blogging is about attracting readers, building an audience, and watching those stats climb, right? How will we do that without consistently churning out brilliant post after brilliant post?
Well, first of all, no. That’s not what blogging is about.
Blogging is about forging genuine connections with people, whether that’s connecting over some profound, thought-provoking post or a post about edible unicorn poop.
Blogging is about helping people get to know you, and about you getting to know them. Through our blogs, we introduce people to the important things about us — our likes, our dislikes, our favorite books and movies, our dreams, our fears, our opinions.
Blogging is about promotion. Sure, of course it is. Whether you’re a writer trying to connect with readers or a more general blogger just trying to get your opinions heard, every blogger is “selling” something. But this cannot be the focus of our blogs.
In fact, our focus is simple: Blogging is about ourselves, and about the people we want to know. Blogging is an area of life in which it’s okay to talk about ourselves. As I said above, on our blogs, we talk about the things that make us who we are, and by doing so, we connect with like-minded people, or even non-like-minded people, who find us because they disagree with what we’re saying and want to discuss. Blogging is about exchanging content, discovering new ideas, and just plain talking to people we wouldn’t otherwise get to talk to.
Doesn’t that sound like fun? That brings me to my next and most important point:
Blogging is about fun.
If you’re blogging and you’re not having fun with it, if you’re not getting some kind of pleasure out of putting that content out there and interacting with the people who view it, you’re doing it wrong. Blogging is helpful (it makes us better writers!), it’s social (it helps us make new friends!), it’s a creative outlet (it gives us a venue in which to draw poorly rendered unicorn pictures!).
Blogging should not be stressful. When blogging becomes stressful, it is no longer fulfilling its purpose. It has been perverted by whatever skewed expectations we have placed on it, by our examination of statistics and hits and number of comments, by our comparisons to other blogs, by the unreasonable standards we hold ourselves to. Every post must be a work of art, of ART, we think.
No. No, it doesn’t. All any post has to be is true to the spirit and character of the person writing it.
I have to remind myself of this every once in a while, when I place unrealistic expectations on my blog content. Blogging is not a chore or a job. Some people say blogging is a do-or-die necessity for writers today, and I honestly don’t know what I think about that. I just know that I love consuming and creating content in this way, that countless blogs have inspired me, taught me, moved me, made me laugh, and made me think. And these blog authors didn’t do that by pretending to be something that they were not, by writing what they thought they should have written or by writing a post specifically crafted to go viral. No, the best blog posts are when the author is most completely him- or herself.
Forget the stress, the expectations, the daily slog through statistics.
It’s okay to be yourself. It’s okay to blog yourself.
I’m reminded of the line from Field of Dreams (i.e., That Baseball Movie That Seriously Freaked Out My Childhood Self When The Little Girl Choked On The Hotdog):
“Build it, and they will come.”
Similarly, when we are ourselves, people will come. No one likes a phony. But everyone likes someone who is openly, unabashedly true to self.
The same holds true for blogs.
So, the blogging moral here for you (and for me): Relax, have fun, be true, and, in the immortal words of Genie (wait for it, it’s about thirty seconds in):
(SEE? Aladdin wasn’t true to himself and ended up causing a whole bunch of nasty ruckus because of it. You don’t want to do that with your blog, do you? DO YOU?)
Tags: Aladdin, Being True To Yourself, Blogging, Connections, Genie
Claire currently lives in Texas but will soon be in New York City! She writes fantastical stories, and her daemon is an ocelot but sometimes a unicorn. When presented with the choice to high five or not to high five, she will always choose TO HIGH FIVE. Her first novel, THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, due out August 28, 2012 from 
