Reasons I think I need to get back to blogging (continued from last week)
1) My decision to start blogging regularly again was inspired partly by Kristen Lamb’s excellent post Breaking Facebook Dependence: How to Create an Enduring Author Brand. I have migrated most of my commentary to Facebook, because that’s where I seem to get the most engagement. But Kristen is right about so many things…No one knows if Facebook will suddenly go the way of MySpace and take my entire history with it. I don’t want my interactions with readers or other authors to be entirely reliant on other forms of social media. I don’t always want to meet on the communal property that is Facebook and Twitter. I want to invite people over to my place, too. Because here I have wine, and I can be inappropriate if I want. Because it’s my place, damn it. I’ll do and say what I like.
2) I need to keep writing regularly, to keep reminding myself I’m an author. Sometimes I feel like that’s
Picture credit: Kristen Lamb
slipping away from me and blogging will hopefully keep me grounded in the knowledge that I am still a writer. Always have been, always will be. No matter how many or few books I write or manage to publish. I AM a writer. It’s not a job I do (believe me, if it was a job I would have quit it long ago due to poor wages and conditions), it’s something I am. Without it, I’m simply not me.
3) I CAN be me here. This is my domain. My “benevolent dictatorship”. I have no real control over who sees or comments on my FB feed, and no way can I say anything political over there unless I want to invite trolls. I think I’d like to take control of the messages I’m sending out once again, even if only 5 people read them. LOL.
4) Maybe I want to be political, huh? Maybe I do. I don’t think there’s any point sending hate and discord out into the world, but I think it’s even worse to remain silent when you see what you believe are great wrongs being done. So take that as fair warning: I am quite a lefty (what readers in the US might understand to be ‘liberal’, but here in OZ our right wing political party is called the Liberal Party…so that can get confusing). I believe in equal rights for all, I’m a feminist. I’m passionate about education and health care remaining public. I think the gap between the wealthy and the poor is getting too wide for comfort, I believe our climate is changing and we should effing DO something about it and I’m sick to death of politicians’ palms being greased by big businesses with self-interests deemed more important than the public interest. I’m sick of the ME ME ME attitude that seems to prevail, “I am normal and anything different is ‘other’ and ‘wrong’”. I want inclusion. I want harmony. I want cooperation. The world needs it. The world needs peace and without cooperation, empathy and inclusion, we simply will not achieve it. My left wing blue-collar roots might show once in a while. So if any posts that might lean that way are going to piss you off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This is me, getting back to blogging.
Welcome back, welcome back!