There’s a reason I’ve always been so inconsistent with keeping up this blog. It’s because taking time to blog here makes me feel guilty. It’s not something I get paid to do, and it’s time I’m not spending working on my fiction. So in the hierarchy of things I spend my writing time/energy on, blogging always comes dead last, after paying work and fiction projects. Of course, once those priorities are out of the way, I often don’t have any time or energy left for writing a blog post (and when I do, my content marketing blog usually wins, since it exists to attract potential paying clients).
But what about building my author platform, building my audience and selling books? This week, Kristen Lamb’s Blog had a great post about the importance of blogging, which makes some excellent points, not the least of which is the importance of a well-kept blog in building your platform and connecting with your readers. She also talks about how blogging consistently helps train you to write through distractions, overcome perfectionism, and meet deadlines.
But the point that convinced me to stop putting my blog last is a truth that I knew already but had forgotten: blogging (at least, for me) serves as a fantastic writing warm-up to loosen the creative gears and get me into the necessary frame of mind. So instead of keeping on doing what I’ve been doing, which is sitting down to work on freelance writing and not allowing myself to blog until it’s done, and then continuing to sit for more than an hour and stare at the screen between checking Facebook while trying to psych myself up to actually write something, I’m going to try to start out my non-fiction writing sessions with a blog post to warm up. At least then I’ll actually be doing something productive with that time.
In other news, we took our Chihuahua, Pete, to the vet this week. He’s had six seizures this month (that we’re aware of), and he was due for blood work to check his thyroid. Because of the seizures, she (the vet) went ahead and did a full panel, and discovered that his liver enzymes are extremely elevated, which she things may be responsible for the seizures. So we’re treating that (poor dog’s taking more pills now than Matt and I combined) and hoping it will put a stop to the seizures, or at least slow them down.
Was he happy about going to the vet? Not at all:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InwtJLAa5gM]
Poor little guy. But at least he hasn’t had any seizures in the last few days.