Tuesday 22 April 2008

Blogging Fatigue

Don't worry, it is not as bad as it sounds. I talked with a friend about this the other day and many people who start blogging seem to feel this at times. It is a great undertaking and it is not always easy to know what to put on the blog. You often start blogging – at least I did – because there is something you want to talk about or there is a story to tell or just to communicate.


I wanted to talk about my fantasies, full stop. I wanted to tell others about my fantasies hoping that I would find that I wasn't alone with them and that I wasn't the weird person I always thought I was. So, communicating was the reason for blogging on my behalf. I have found that my blog has become a forum for my writings. And there is nothing wrong with that. I love writing. It is something magical about writing. It empowers me and it changes me. It is a kind of therapy really, a kind of controlled madness that opens my eyes to things that roams in my mind.


It is all very self centred. I have never pretended it is anything else. Your comments really help me see things in my writing and myself that I don't always see. I never just dismiss an analysis. At least I hope I have never done that. I don't even delete comments. Unless they are commercial. Comments that are there to sell something are mercilessly deleted. I have come close with one or two other comments, for example, when I was accused of having grammar errors that weren't errors but I let it be. But on the whole, I am open to interpretations. I like them. I want to know what you think, what you see and what something I write makes you think of. So thank you all for all your comments.


But sometimes the mind just wanders and I am too busy with the other life, the ordinary, normal one, the one I don't talk about here. I don't know what to write about and the stories I have in my head are only half written. Then I feel a little of that blogging fatigue I mentioned earlier.


Sometimes I think I have fallen too much in love with the writing and I feel compelled to always have a story for the blog. That was never what I wanted. Nowadays I find I care too much about the quality of my stories. I have become a little vain and want them to be well written and interesting. I think I manage that from time to time but I know some of them are not so very brilliant. I think that is good, I think I want it that way. I want to put even the silly ones, the stranger ones and the badly written ones on the blog because this was never meant to be a story blog. It is a fantasy blog. This is about fantasies.


And I would very much like to talk to you about fantasies. Maybe I should post a question or a thought on the blog and see if you want to comment or discuss it? Maybe some of you who read but don't comment may have something to add. I have no problems with, so called, 'lurkers'. I think it is absolutely fine that you come here and just read. I gather there are some of you out there because the number of people who comments is smaller than the number of visitors per day and all of the hits can't be Web crawlers and Web agents.


So, thank you for reading, and being so immensely supportive. It means the world to me and I am not done with blogging yet, although I don't always know what to put here. My head is still full of strange and not so strange ideas.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your writings are the best I have read anywhere - that you hold yourself to a high standard of writing is appreciated by me. And, your work has variety and you experiment with style and mood setting. It would be good to design questions you want us to answer, which you could post on the days you do not have finished work to post. Please stay with this blog, I too feel weird having this fetish and by reading good short pieces with it at the center, makes me feel less alone. So, thank you for all of your hard work.

Anonymous said...

I know all about the fatigue bloggers can face and at those times it is good to go back to the reasons you started it in the first place.

As you know, dear Janice, I very much enjoy reading your writing and these musings you bring us as well. I will always stick my beak into any discussion I see here.

I like 'web crawler' and have this image of a creepy little creature snuffling and crawling through the lines of code that connect us.

Hugs
Mina

Paul said...

Janice, since I've know you, by means of your writing, I've admired your imagination.
Your imaginative writing triggers certain images in my mind, my perception is from where I stand.
The lovely thing about imaginative writing is that the author writes one thing, often by the sweat of their brows, each of their readers see something different, for example Mina's perceptions are different than mine, as I would expect them to be, your other commenter's are different also.
Another thing that I should mention, your blog is there for you, not visa-versa.
I will happily answer your questions, from my point of view and mind-set, I am unable to do otherwise.
I am aware dear Janice, that none of us is perfect, please allow me to be lavish in my praise rather than miserly.
I do enjoy your writing and your strange imagination.
Love and warm hugs,
Paul.

Anonymous said...

My Dear Janice,
How well I know -- how well you know I know (and so on...) -- about blogging fatigue. Hence the (timely) demise of one W.E. (and others) -- mourned perhaps by a few, but not by me. I relate completely to the realization that sometimes blogging can be a chore (and a bore), and that the average reader (tho yours are not average) does not understand the effort involved. However, I prophesy: You will find the stamina, and the mental resources and drive, to return, reinvigorated and as strangely imaginative as ever.

Warm Regards,
Marcus DeJour, AKA...

Anonymous said...

I got like this too. I started treating it like job - thought I had to meet deadlines, keep up the regularity of my posts, got worried if I didn't have anything to write about or if it wasn't original or different enough - then I just deleted it all and almost instantly regretted it.

Silly. Lesson learned - if its not flowing, go do something else, come back when it is. If it does not seem good enough when you've finsihed, save and come back to it.

You write really goos stuff, don't feel you have to force it....and please don't give up

R si

Janice said...

Dear Anonymous, those are kind words indeed. I may just do that, put questions to you all. It is a good idea, thank you. And thank you for being a reader.

Dear Mina, yes, back to what started it, that is a good idea. And, Mina, you are always welcome with your beak...smiles. And, as far as I know, web crawlers are exactly like that.

Dear Paul, you are always there, always reading and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. And I do hope that what I write may create images in the readers minds and it is not important if they are the same or different. Maybe that is why it works out fine being self centred and yet share.

Dear Marcus, yes, it can be a chore but I have to tell you it has never been a bore. I have never ever regretted started blogging. It is one of the best things I have ever done. It is just that I lose focus at times and then it is time to think about why I started it. I still love it.

Dear Recidavist, sorry to hear that you felt that way. I have never come close to deleting it. I love writing and blogging too much. I think I wanted to share those thoughts with the readers. But I agree that there are deadlines, out of respect for my readers, I do want to have something there. But I still love it. When I stop loving it, then I will stop blogging, but I don't feel I have come close yet.

Hugs

Janice