I composed this post in its entirety in my head on the way to work this morning. This written version is unlikely to be as good, so apologies for that. But here goes anyway.
Some eight years ago, when next to nobody read this, I wrote at length about lazy blog posts, identifying half a dozen blogging tropes that I perceived to be slack at best: things like bandwagoneering, embedding YouTube videos with nothing new to accompany them, old chestnuts, whimsy, that sort of thing. Back then, I typically posted less than once a week. These days, I'm posting two to three times a week, but many (most?) of these posts are of the type that I previously lambasted. And it's not that I'm lazy, it's more that I've become trapped, I think, in the post/check-pageviews cycle, whilst also being time-poor. I don't have the time to write something good, or original, or new, yet I don't want to drop the baton, so I've just started churning stuff out on autopilot. Oh, the dilemma...
So. I have a few Sundays Shorts posts scheduled, and a Blue Friday for some time next month. I have the next ten Counter posts scheduled too, but they're only one a year and are for me only, no-one else. I will, at least, finish the Nineteen in '19 series because a challenge is a challenge, after all. But beyond that...? Well, I'm time-poor and should be writing fiction... so why am I spaffing what little writing time I have up the wall, churning out lazy blog posts?
Or could it be that I've just run out of words? The standard line, when facing a crisis of blogging confidence like this, is to say that the mojo has been lost, and that it will come back. But maybe it's more than that - maybe it's gone for good.
Either way, something has to change, so this might be the start of what my current employer calls a phased retirement. Let's celebrate that with an appropriate live performance from the Pope of Mope, back when people still liked him.
Just spotted this one on a sidebar - How odd Martin as I was just about to write the same kind of post. I have indeed lost my mojo for blogging at the moment and not quite sure why. I seem to have developed a certain style whereby I write fairly lengthy, heavily researched posts and despite having a wealth of ideas in my head, just feel a bit too time-poor to execute them at the moment. The short and snappy style of blogging has never worked for me so the result seems to be a mini-hiatus. There is the worry that I have simply run out of words but don't think that's it either.
ReplyDeleteAs for what you are doing, I don't think it's a bad thing to write on autopilot for fear of dropping the baton, and your content is always good and original. The bad thing is to drop the baton which I seem to have done at the moment. I will try over the weekend to pick it up again - lets see. I am fully aware I still have to write a review for you wonderful book by the way, but on the long mental list of "posts pending"!
Maybe we're both suffering from the blogger's curse...
DeleteWhat both you and Alyson say resonates with me too. Perhaps it is just the way things change, for instance I used to love writing letters, long letters. Then it was emails. Gradually what I wrote, and what I received, got shorter and shorter. Now much of my discourse is through text. No-one, including me, seems to want to sit and pour stuff out in the written word as much as we once did, but at one time it just felt so easy and so enjoyable - and normal. And as a result I feel like the lengthy writing side of my brain has got blunt and flabby, because it's starting to feel outdated. I don't like this feeling, I want it to feel sharp and energetic and stimulated, but I can rarely muster that up any more and it seems to me it is as much about the world around us, the changing means of discourse, the speed, the multi-tasking, the abundance of distractions, as it is about me and my brain. Does that make sense? Is that how it feels to you sometimes?
ReplyDeletePerhaps we should take a post-modern approach to blogging. I don't want it to end because I need it to be there. I don't want you and Alyson to stop for the same reasons, I would miss you. But perhaps we need a fresh approach? Write what the fuck we like, press publish without editing and - most important of all - DON'T LOOK AT ANY STATS!
That's pretty much how I feel, C - blunt and flabby blogging in an overly-sharp world. Not looking at stats is also good advice. So much of it though is that, having built a modest readership, I feel I ought to be posting something, and of a reasonable standard, but I just don't have anything much to write about. I'm tired of trying to convince the world to see things my way too, otherwise I'd bombard you all with even more opinion pieces... but the stats (sorry!) tell me that such posts are far less popular than song-related posts. Argh. What to do? Whatever, a few scheduled posts will buy me some time. Until then, this may well be the last song I ever sing, to quote Moz. Time will tell whether I'll stick to that, like the live version, or "change my mind again", like the studio version of this song.
DeleteYou've articulated it quite well C, we don't really live in a world where letters and long emails have a place any more (well, there are exceptions of course!) - I think my problem is that I have a certain style of blogging and the lengthy posts complete with pictures, music & video clips take a fair amount of time to put together. I seem to have become really busy with other stuff at the moment so never get the time to sit at the computer, although when I do it is strangely relaxing. Another problem at the moment is that there's been a plethora of great telly of late and struggling to keep up with it and blog as well! Hope to sit down over the weekend but like Martin I'd prefer to keep up the standard rather than churn out posts just for the hell of it, but "if you don't use it you lose it" so got to pick up that baton again.
DeleteWe seem to be at a crossroads here.
ReplyDeleteI undertand and agree what everyone is saying but it would be a shame if our small community was to wither on the vine.
My posts are short because I try to do them daily but it can still be a stuggle sometimes.
And yes C the stats are plummenting at the moment maybe because folks are feeling the same way.
I would certainly miss you all if you weren't here!
Yes, the community aspect has become important for me too - it's part of what's kept me blogging this long, I think.
DeleteAm probably over-analysing. Far easier just to blame Twitter!
I'm certainly not planning on going anywhere as I love the whole community aspect of blogging but I would like to find a way of making my posts shorter and easier to put together - As I always say CC, you have the knack of writing a short and snappy post, but mine are more like War & Peace.
ReplyDeleteI like a good long read, Alyson.
DeleteMartin, you said you just don't have anything much to write about - I totally get that as I seem to lead such a one-dimensional life a lot of the time, work and home and not a lot else. Here's a thing though - I love writing about random subjects, and/or abstract approaches to ordinary things (because most of my life is extraordinarily ordinary!) So it might be the way someone remarked on my gloves, or seeing that tree that looked the devil, or the name of my lipstick... they're never planned and they just come from nowhere. Could that be something to try out some time?
ReplyDeleteI used to write more of that kind of post, proportionally. Maybe there's mileage in that.
DeleteFor what it's worth, my two penneth: ignore stats, and write when you want to write.
ReplyDeleteWrite about what you want to write about when you want to write about it, and don't feel obliged to write just because it's expected.
I've never mastered writing daily posts (and am in awe of those who can), and once I accepted that I became a more happy blogger. Now, pretty much everything I post happens at the weekend, when I have more time on my hands. Weekday posts only appear if I think of something and then happen to turn on the trusty laptop on the same day, otherwise it waits (and is usually discarded as a bad idea, or put on the back burner as something I haven't quite worked out the right way to articulate) until the weekend.
What I mean is this: take a step back. Don't write for a while, and you'll be amazed how many things you think of that you want to write about. And then come back. We'll still be here.
We'd all rather have you here posting sporadically than not at all.
Cheers, Jez, much appreciated. I've already wanted to write two film reviews... Time will always be an issue though. Never mind - and a scheduled post will drop, as I believe the kids say, tomorrow.
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