Blogging,  Nonfiction,  Writing

You Are a Writer

I downloaded Jeff Goins’ You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) for free on my Kindle a few days ago. It’s not a long book, but it’s one that refreshes and refocuses and inspires.

The main thing a writer does, Goins points out, is write. So what are you waiting for? The book outlines some of the reasons writers don’t write, such as waiting to be chosen, or not believing that they have anything to say, and offers a dose of encouragement and practical motivation. It also suggests a few practical steps writers need to take.

Blogging plays a part in Goins’ vision. This is part of establishing a platform to connect with an audience, he explains. Other forms of social networking and marketing also figure into his ideas about how to chart a course toward developing as a successful writer. He is direct about some of the protests people may feel about self-marketing, and writes in a warm, understanding voice about the challenges and hopes of the journey.

It was a timely read for me. I’ve been thinking seriously about abandoning blogging altogether. It takes time that might be invested in my family or in different kinds of writing projects. It has formal limitations; I don’t want to write anything too long, or too personal, on my blog, whereas the best writing often delves deeply and at length into topics close to the heart. It also has served in some ways as a buffer against aspects of my own situation — my own sense of isolation as a stay-at-home mom without any real, functional community to be a part of — that might be more painful if I weren’t engaged in the pleasant distraction of online writing.

Years ago, when I committed myself to break free once and for all from bulimia, I remember being apprehensive about the gap it would leave: all that time spent in dietary issues would now weigh on my hands. What would fill the space? Ultimately, good, real things filled the space — relationships, new interests and experiences, familiar tasks performed to a higher standard because I was not distracted by the black hole of my eating issues. I have wondered what might fill the space blogging would leave behind, and I suspect it’s quite possible that the same wonderful results would come into being.

But the fact remains that blogging has this great feature: it has made me write, more than I ever have in any other medium. I have stacks of half-filled notebooks in my house from my pre-blogging years, their empty pages testifying to my sense of the pointlessness of writing just for myself. Blogging has made the concept of an audience real and immediate in ways that my notebooks never did, thanks to the comments section and the opportunities it has opened up for me to connect with other writers through their blogs. And now, after five years of it, I have many pages worth of finished articles on all kinds of topics, and a record of events and readings that I can navigate and consult much more easily than than my old notebooks allow.

One of my concerns lately has been that blogging has isolated me further by semi-satisfying my desire for friendship. I feel like I have some genuine friends online, but they don’t live nearby. I’ll probably never meet them. Does this keep me from taking the initiative I need to take here in the “real world” on this side of the keyboard? I’ve never found it easy to be outgoing; does this introvert-friendly style of communicating keep me from taking some necessary risks?

But Goins makes an interesting point. Becoming a writer isn’t just about the ideas or the writing. It’s about networking and building relationships. “There is a relational part of this job of being a writer that you need to embrace,” he explains, “even if you’re the most introverted person in the world.” It’s not only in the face-to-face world offline that this happens, but anywhere a writer tries to connect with an audience or a potential publisher of her work. This means that a blog is not necessarily a refuge from risk. It can happen there as well as anywhere; and, perhaps, I can grow here as well as anywhere — as a writer and as a whole person. It’s an interesting thought.

The author has a blog called Goins, Writer, where he makes the book available as well as offering loads of practical inspiration and advice. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I suggest you check it out. As I read this book, I remembered my freshman composition teacher in college. She was always sparing with criticism and lavish with praise, and once a classmate pointed out, “When you think about it, what we need the most is to write if we want to improve as writers. And that’s what she encourages us to do. She doesn’t pick us apart; she makes us want to write.” This book operates the same way. It’s just what the doctor ordered.

8 Comments

  • Jess

    I continually ask myself some of these very questions- what is blogging anyway? how seriously do I take it? I was visiting family this week- away from the internet, immersed in the quiet simplicity of farmland, and thinking it would seem healthy to abandon any online presence altogether. But then I compare that to the amish population where I am from, who have taken this approach to technology and see how it becomes it’s own kind of religion. Is rejecting an online presence now, as a writer, the same as rejecting the convenience of, say, the printing press? Or more recently the word processor? I don’t know . . . I know how Wendell Berry would feel :-). Good post, sounds like an interesting read.

  • Janet

    Nicholas Carr talks about something similar in The Shallows — how all technologies shape us. He talks about writing itself as a technology, and how Socrates was scornful of it because he thought it would weaken the mind. (I wonder what WB would think of that proposition; he writes out all of his books longhand. :)

    Goins advocates using lots of online social networking, but I have to draw a boundary at blogging. I know what you mean when you speak of “abandoning your online presence.” I have felt some twinges of new joy lately as I’ve blogged less, or more selectively. I’ve felt more “present” to my offline world. But I believe I’d lose something valuable as a writer if I quit blogging altogether. I believe it’s not only experience and thought, but also writing, that generate more writing. Blogging has made me write more.

    I think that for me the key may be confining myself to the subjects most meaningful to me, and avoiding some of the “fillers” that might generate blog posts but don’t represent much effort or risk.

  • bekahcubed

    I struggle with the two-faced-ness of blogging, how it promotes online connection and often undermines offline connection. I have to consciously remind myself to get out and do stuff face to face with people, that “internet friendships” aren’t enough. At the same time, I also value blogging as “me time” and as an opportunity to exercise my mind and to articulate my thoughts.

  • Amy @ Hope Is the Word

    Janet,

    As always, you articulate so well so many of my own feelings about blogging. I know I spend too much time on it, and really, I don’t consider myself much of a writer. But it does bring me joy and I have made friends this way. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I appreciate this post and I would really, really miss you if you gave it up. :-)

  • Sherry

    Yes. I love the writing and the thinking I do because I blog. I hate the other effects that blogging has on me–distraction from my family, shorter attention span for reading. And I really don’t know how to balance these.

  • Beth@Weavings

    I enjoyed reading your thoughts about this book and blogging. I downloaded this book also, but haven’t read it yet. I think I am going to move this to the top of my TBR list.