It came up on one of the writing forums today: why do writers blog about writing?

Good question.

For me I think it’s because it lets me talk and show my personality without subjecting people to the boredom of my life.  As much as I love my puppy, I don’t think anyone else would be interested in our trip to the dog park today.  (She loved running on the hills in the snow.)

Or about how my mom’s tooth went south on her this weekend and she’s going to have to have it pulled and how I think that’skind of a good thing since she’s been afraid to go to the dentist since her open heart surgery eight years ago and now she’s found one she likes and trusts.And how I hope and pray that this goes well and doesn’t lead to another heart infection since it took three weeks of lobbying her to have the surgery to repair her heart instead of just giving up last time and I’m not sure we’d have the time to convince her this time around.

I write most days.  But there’s not much I can say about it.  I love my characters, but not so much that I’d blog about them repeatedly.  I tried writing posts about each short story as I published it, but I think I enjoyed exploring those ideas more than anyone enjoyed reading them.  And with novels I tend to keep my ideas pretty close to the vest.  There may be no original ideas out there, but that doesn’t mean I have to share my approach with the world before I’ve finished writing it.

Sure, if someday I’m famous people will care about how my mind works and how I come up with ideas and what I have to say about my characters.

But I’m not.  So I can either blog about my personal life and bore the world.  Or I can blog about something I’m deeply familiar with–the creative process and writing–and hopefully spread a little bit of knowledge and connection.

And hopefully someday I will be successful and famous and someone can come to this blog and see one writer’s progression from wide-eyed newbie who didn’t know a thing to successful published writer.

That’ll be in another five years or so, so I will say now that I admire the dedication of anyone who comes to a nine-year-old blog and reads it start to finish.  They’ll know me better than I know me if they do that.

I have found authors to read through their blogs about writing.  I’ve bought books by Chuck Wendig, Patricia C. Wrede, John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jim C. Hines, and Seth Godin because of what I read on their blogs.  LeGuin and Godin generally blog about their thoughts and life, but the others blog about writing or, with Gaiman, about appearances and promotions.

So it can be of value, I guess.

Honestly, as a reader, I could care less if a writer has a blog.  I certainly never bothered looking for a blog by a writer before I decided I wanted to be one.  So for me blogging just lets me keep up with my writing and share some of the cool articles or advice I find in my own journey.

But I will say for any writers reading this blog, what I do is not the method to use to monetize your blog through book sales.  To do that you have to engage with your readers in some way or another.