If you don’t publish a long form post for over a year, are you still a blogger? In my head, I’ve been a blogger since the late nineties. I’ve gone through stretches of heavy posting, and light posting, but just as I was restarting the habit a little more strongly with joining Micro.blog—which I think is a near-ideal blend of short-form “microblogging” and long-form “traditional blogging”, I’ve gone cold. My last post that was more than a couple paragraphs was over a year ago. In iA Writer, where I compose my long-form posts, I have 6 unpublished multi-paragraph stubs between then and now.
Why the stall? Honestly, I have no idea. As my children have become middle and late teenagers, in a sense I have more time than any time in the past nearly (!) two decades. Perhaps one of the reasons is feedback.
One of the hallmarks of micro.blog is that they do not have likes or even comments (unless you implement them, and I’ve chosen not to). Without these, I have no signal that anyone is even reading my writing, which kills a good deal of the extrinsic motivation. Primarily I’m intrinsically motivated to publish my thoughts, so it’s not exclusively this external signal.
Another competing element is that I’ve been writing a very long-form piece for over a year. Probably not book-length, but maybe “essay-collection”-length? My writing time has gone there, and it’s not ready for public consumption. Back-and-forth in my mind I debate “writing it until it’s done and posting it as one complete concept” versus “break it into essay-sized chunks that can be posted online and get feedback”. Which brings me to my favorite state of mind, analysis-paralysis.
What does it mean to “be a blogger”? Dave Winer surely has a definition, and man, he’s been posting daily since the 90s, and that’s an impressive streak. He had this concept of a “natural-born blogger” and mine only partially aligns. For me, the main trait is that you learn something interesting and you’re instantly possessed to share that thing with anyone who will listen.
Perhaps I will dig deep and try to write publish a real piece (i.e. one that’s not a naval-gazer about one’s own writing, or, lack thereof) this week. But for now, I’m just going to hit publish with no editing. You’ll tell me where I messed up, right?