With all due respect to Shakespeare, to blog or not to blog, that is the question. And it's a question I have asked myself frequently over the past few months. Like most indie authors, I frequently peruse articles regarding methods for success in the dog-eat-dog publishing world and more often that not, one of those recommended methods is to blog. In fact, it comes across as more of a command than a suggestion. "If you are an author, you must have a blog!" the articles trumpet, usually followed by, "If you have a blog, you must add new content constantly!" To which I typically find myself thinking, I'm lucky if I can find time to brush my teeth. When the hell am I going to find time to blog?
Here's the problem, and it's a problem faced by many--if not most--independent authors: limited writing time. Sure, if I had 8 hours a day to write, I would bang out a new blog every other day and twice on Sundays. But with all the responsibilities and activities that come with a full-time career and family, the available writing time gets chopped down to slivers. I get up an hour before work in the morning to write and sometimes (not always) scrape together another 30-60 minutes before bed. That's it.
Perhaps I should feel like some kind of slug because I only write 1-2 hours per day, but that is all I have to give. So with that said, should I spend that limited time blogging? More and more these days, my answers has been "no."
Here's the thing: I do not write fast. Oh, I can type pretty fast, but typing is not the same thing as writing. In those 60-90 minutes I scrape together each day to write, I am usually able to generate 1-2 pages of a manuscript. It takes me about the same amount of time to write a blog post. So what's the better use of my time? Writing pages in the next novel or writing a blog entry?
Your mileage may very, but I saw no uptick in book sales when I started blogging and have seen no downtick in sales since I took a 7 month blogging hiatus. And during that period of blogging abstinence, I was able to co-write and publish a new novel (Gristle, co-authored with Derric Miller). Had I felt the need to blog weekly, I doubt that novel would be done yet. While it's not all about the money, it's not NOT about the money either, and by getting a new novel out, I am making money. As it commonly does, releasing a new novel increased sales of my other books as well. Blogging did not do that for me and begs the question, why should I keep doing it?
It is entirely possible that I am going about blogging all wrong. Maybe blogging is not a waste of time but the way I blog is. To that I merely shrug my shoulders and say, "Whatever." I do not mean to discourage anyone from blogging--if it works for you, by all means, go for it--but for me, forcing myself to blog has done nothing but rob me of time that I feel would be better spent working on a new novel. I will not shut down this blog and will continue to periodically post new content, but it will be when I want to do so, not because I feel I have to do so.
So the question was, to blog or not to blog? My answer is yes ... but only when I damn well please.
