Six months

Given all the end-of-the-year whining and worrying I seem to have become mired in due to the heat, the humidity, the mad push toward final exams and closing up the classroom, the lack of progress on my WIP, as well as all kinds of other things, I thought I’d take a break from it.

I read somewhere around the blogosphere that most blogs fail within the first six months. In my current state, I missed celebrating the fact that I started this blog on January 1st and that June 1st was my six month anniversary. That I’ve made it here is in no small part due to the warm, kind, generous welcome and interaction all of you have shared with me. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support as we all take our writing journey together. I really do look forward to continuing that journey together.

No more words.

There are times, an increasing number of times it seems, when at the end of the day, after talking, and talking, and talking some more to students, parents, administrators, husband, kids, that I have no words left. No voice to speak, no brain cells to rub together for thought, nothing to put fingers to keyboard to write or blog. You're just empty, empty, empty. Burn out, balance, call it what you will, it seems an occupational hazard for bloggers and writers. And it seems to be running rampant through the blogosphere.

Copyblogger has a great post about what you can do when you run out of content, words, knowledge. Check it out and tell me: Has this ever happened to you? Where do you get your inspiration, knowledge, words, content, ideas, whatever you call it, to write and/or blog? What do you do when they don’t come?

I'm supposed to do what?

I’m not there yet, and I may never be there, but at some point I dream of getting to the query stage of my writer’s journey. Heaven knows we’ve all heard a lot about platforms and building them and why they’re necessary. And we’ve all seen the posts about all of this.

Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency has an interesting post about this, including the value of blogs in building a writer’s platform, as well as other really good ideas about how and why we need to do this. The flip side is posted by Rebecca over at Criminal Minds. Go check them out and while you’re doing that I’ll be checking out my Facebook and Twitter accounts again, trying to figure out how to make them useful and not just a time suck. Or maybe I’ll see if I can find a blogfest to sign up for.

And then maybe I’ll go to the library.

How about you? Building your platform? How are you doing it? Or are you ignoring it all and hoping it just goes away?

What's going on?

Yesterday, Theresa Milstein had a brave and honest post about writing and blogging, real life and choices, and the very real economic and opportunity costs and consequences of each. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, you should.

Because I think a lot of us face those questions to some degree or other, as it seems a whole host of people have been/currently are/will soon be unplugged.

There are blogs out there telling you how to write a blog, blogs devoted to writing better blogs, blogs telling you how to make money writing blogs. None of which is wrong or bad. But blogging is time consuming.

And on top of everything else, it seems everywhere we look lately, blogs and platforms and branding are touted as not only necessary but de rigueur for writers seeking publication. Behler Blog weighed in here with a slightly different take on the subject that I thought was an interesting read.

All that being said, I'd like to ask: Why do you blog? What do you want it to be? Hobby? Job? Hybrid? Do you get what you want from it? How much time do you spend? Would you stop? Why?