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?)

(DISCLAIMER: I REALIZE THAT I HAVE A GOOD LIFE, I HAVE MANY BLESSINGS, I AM THANKFUL FOR EVERYTHING, I AM AT LEAST NOT STARVING IN SOME POST-APOCALYPTIC OR EQUIVALENT DUNG HEAP, THANK YOU.)

The thing is, there is so much going on right now (ALTHOUGH IT IS ALL GOOD), and it is showing no signs of stopping (THANK GOD I KNOW RIGHT BLESSINGS EVERYWHERE), that I have pretty much just been alternating between writing feverishly on The October Year . . . and curling up with chips or cheese or some other thing I should not be snacking on and watching YouTube videos (like this one).

Plus, since I’m feeling overwhelmed just in general, and since general overwhelmed . . . ness . . . can lead to more specific kinds of whelm, I also have these random moments of like, “OH MY GOD. My first book is coming out THIS YEAR and I’m not doing enough and I’m so unprepared and no one will like it and there are so many other books coming out that are so much cooler than mine and HOW WILL I EVER BE HEARD?”

Plus there is the moving and the saying good-bye to friends and family. More chips. More cheese. More YouTube videos (like this one).

Thankfully, I also discovered Battlestar Galactica this week. Now, this is one of those shows that everyone and their tauntaun has been telling me I should watch since, I don’t know, forever. I just never made the time for it, though; committing to a multi-season show is asking a lot at this point in my life. But in a recent moment of particularly potent whelm, I decided I was just going to go ahead and start watching it. I needed something to do with myself between bouts of frenetic writing and cheese-snarfling.

Well, lo and behold, everyone and their tauntaun was RIGHT. It is SO GOOD. Jaw-droppingly so, even.

But a couple of episodes in, I remembered that, in my rush of rebellious excitement, I’d forgotten that I’d promised The Boy we would watch it together. So I halted my watching, and will resume later. I know, right? Twue wuv. Agent Lady was impressed by my willpower.

I’ve been listening to the score, though — mainly the miniseries score, by Richard Gibbs. I’ve thus far managed to keep from shelling out the $50+ for the entire series’ scores. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Check it, and be INSPIRED (and then send me some cheese?):

On the other hand, I also enjoy cheesy 90s movies, graphic tee-shirts, and fried mozzarella sticks, as well as toilet humor, used sparingly. And it would be redundancy bordering on cruel and unusual punishment to remind you how much I love unicorns.

Therefore, imagine my DELIGHT OF DELIGHTS when former roomie Starr (@artgeeklibraria), writer friend Serena (@serenalawless), and @katiecoops on Twitter all forwarded me THIS geekologie.com link:

In case you are temporarily bumfuzzled and can’t figure out what you’re looking at, let me explain that this is a sparkly, sprinkly, multicolored, undoubtedly delicious sugar cookie shaped like a blob of unicorn poop.

I mean, of course unicorn poop would be tasty. Unicorns are made of light and sea shanties and morally righteous glitter.

Look! A unicorn has visited your backyard during the night and left you a token of its affections!

Mmm. Look at that sugary, crispy-chewy goodness!

PLOP.

Obviously I will need to bake these for my someday unicorn-themed mega bash. Cupcake toppers could easily be used as cookie toppers!

If someone makes these before I do, please let me know of their tastiness!

Drafting is hard. At least, it is for me.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m making good progress. Even with all the recent developments in my life, I’ve managed to chisel enough time out of the craziness to get many, many words written.

The question that haunts me — nay, that plagues me, complete with feverish itching, restlessness, and clammy sweat-fits, is this: Am I writing too much?

I don’t mean that I worry about spending too much time writing. Rather, I worry that I am taking too long to get to the point. My natural inclination is toward wordiness. It is a constant struggle for me to edit down my blog posts, tweets, and emails to be concise and efficient. Wordiness is my Everest. If I am Atlas in this metaphor, wordiness is the heavens on my shoulders, weighing me down. If I am Sisyphus, overcoming my wordy tendencies is the boulder I must push ever upward.

This might seem counterintuitive. “But, Claire,” you might say, “drafting is the one stage of writing in which you’re allowed to just write to your heart’s content!”

Well, yes. And no. Yes, drafting allows for a certain freedom. It is the beginning, the period of creation. Anything can happen during drafting. You are discovering your story, and your story is discovering you. Things are tentative, electrifying, heady. You walk shyly together down a lamplit street. Cobblestones gleam black and silver from misting rain and moonlight. Your hands brush together, not quite unintentionally. You blush and turn your face away. You cannot hold back your smile. When you return home, you dance triumphantly to ABBA in front of the mirror, giddy with joy.

But for me, this drafting period, this feeling of newness and What will happen next?, while exhilarating, causes great anxiety. During this stage, before the book is complete, I worry. At the start of each new scene, or each new chapter, I worry: Am I rambling? Am I digressing? Am I moving through the story too slowly?

These questions paralyze me. Doubt creeps in. I start to think that perhaps I can’t write after all, that it has all been a fluke. Or, less dramatically, I think, Will I ever reach the point where I can draft more efficiently? Or will it constantly be a struggle, a fight against my own words?

Fretting over such things is exhausting. Writing a book is a challenging enough task without letting worry and doubt get the best of me. Nevertheless, the fear remains. I read other books and wonder how those authors manage to say so much with so few words, and still maintain richness of prose, character, and style.

I wondered this just the other day, walking home from a writing stint at the library. My stomach roiled with anxiety as I thought about the scene I had just finished. It had seemed so much simpler a scene in my outline; then, as I wrote it, the scene became unexpectedly complex and much longer than I had anticipated. Or is it, I wondered, that I’m just not skilled enough to keep it simple?

Then it hit me, most especially after reading a couple of fantastic posts, one by Kait Nolan about steadiness and the other by Leigh Bardugo, specifically about drafting.

Drafting.

I must remember: I’m still only drafting!

Words on the page — that is drafting. Finishing the book is drafting. Churning out a completely polished, pristine manuscript that is no longer or shorter than it absolutely must be — that is not drafting.

A first draft is a crude version of what a book will eventually be. It is not a finished product. It is, however, a product, and that is the important thing to come away with after a draft, and that is what I must constantly remind myself: A draft is a product, however crude, and once I have a complete product in my hands, I can then proceed to make it shine.

Of course, this is different for everyone, and that is another important thing to remember. Everyone’s drafting process is different. Some people revise as they draft. Others don’t stop writing until it is done, and only then do they go back, re-read, and begin revising. Some people write too little in a draft and must flesh it out later. Some people, like me, write more than is necessary for a draft, and must make cuts during revisions.

And maybe I shouldn’t worry about that. Maybe I shouldn’t expect anything from myself other than what I am (and, maybe, neither should you). So, I’m wordy. So what? Why fight my natural instincts? Yes, I should always work to become a better writer. But if how I draft a story is to write more than is necessary, if that’s what I must do to fully realize my characters and my plotlines and my thematic threads, to understand them and write a story worth reading, then so be it. I can always cut later.

After all, I’m still only drafting.

This might seem as though I’m just talking to myself at this point, but I’m also talking to you, to any other writers who may be reading this and struggling with drafting doubts of your own.

Maybe you don’t quite yet know how a particular scene, or chapter, or even an entire section of your book should go. Perhaps, in your draft, you have entered brackets instead of true text, brackets containing the words add later. You might fear that you have used too many of these brackets. (You haven’t.)

Maybe you’re like me, and you know that the chapter you just finished is far too long, but you had to do it that way, to understand it fully, to clarify it for yourself. You know that you must shorten the chapter, but you haven’t figured out how to do that yet. (You will.)

Maybe you revise as you go, and your draft will take you much longer to finish than it would for other people, but when you finish, you will practically have a complete, polished manuscript on your hands. Or maybe you are, as Leigh put it, barreling through your draft and not looking back, even if you think what you just wrote might be terrible, because if you stop now, you might not ever start up again.

The thing is, all of these methods are okay. It is okay to be sparse or wordy. It is okay to be a lightning-fast drafter or a revise-as-you-go drafter. What matters is not the method; what matters is the outcome.

All this to say, to remind myself, that it’s okay to be wordy, as long as I am aware of it, and as long as I am always working to improve my craft. I must always strive to write the best book I can write. That is all I, as a writer, am required to do.

It’s okay to be wordy. And you, whoever you are, however you write — it’s okay to be you, and write you, too.

Seriously. We could eat cupcakes topped with these, and wear glitter and sparkly streamers in our hair. We could watch The Last Unicorn and make fun of the cheesy 80s music but then cry because it’s such a lovely story. And then we could all run around the city with makeshift horns strapped to our heads, doing noble deeds and saving babies.

SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD TIME TO ME.

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