Here Lie Dragons: On Blogging

At the risk of repeating what many a blogger has mused before me, it's a year since I started ViewReview and muse I must.

There's quite a resistance among a certain generation to 'putting themselves out there' on the internet. The internet is where dragons lie, after all. We're more used to privacy. If we went to see a film, usually it ended when the credits rolled, not on Facebook and Twitter the next day. What I'm saying is, it was a Giant Step to decide to start blogging (and tweeting).

I started because there was a certain amount of pressure from other writers, online and in the flesh, to 'put myself out there', to 'get a profile'. And because one of the publishers I wanted to send my novel to said it was important. And because I felt guilty about skulking around other people's blogs anonymously. Mostly, it's been a good idea.

I've had over 7,000 page views thus far. Some of them were dodgy, from places that I'm certain are not interested in my writer-dipping-a-toe posts, places where English isn't generally spoken. But increasingly the views come from real readers only (you!), even garnering responses on occasion, and that's gratifying. What does a writer want, after all, if not readers?

There are days when I realise I haven't blogged in weeks because I've had nothing to say, but felt I had to say something anyway (sorry about that). There have been hours put into posts, instead of into my work-in-progress, or housework or something, which I'm fairly sure no one read. But at those times I think of something @LiamH2009 said about blogging (and I paraphrase from memory with apologies in advance), that he blogs for the same reason Irish navvies used to dig on a Sunday to keep their muscles from seizing up. It's all practice.

Even the tweets. Twitter is often distracting, often pointless, often a total waste of time. But it has also pointed me to great books I might not otherwise have heard of, and events, and I've met some great folks there, some of whom I've subsequently met in the flesh.

The verdict: I like blogging, I like Twitter. And as long as I like them, I'll keep writing on them. Thanks for reading so far.