An Indefinite Pause on Blogging

Since I started blogging in 2016, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it. Back then, I was told that blogs had to have a specific topic or theme. They couldn’t just be personal blogs about whatever you wanted to write about that day. You could only write about one thing and you had to post at least three to five times a week to gain an audience.

Well, I automatically hated that idea because it just seemed like posting for the sake of posting, and even then I hated “content.” Couldn’t a blog just be a personal blog for fun?

Not in 2016.

In 2016 if you considered yourself a writer and wanted to make money writing, then it was absolutely unthinkable to write for free, and that’s basically what personal blogging is. Writing for free. So if you wanted to blog (which you had to do if you wanted to be a writer, even a fiction writer), then you had to grow your audience fast enough so that you could monetize said blog.

So even though I had no idea how I would ever monetize or grow a blog based on anything I was actually interested in, I dove in, starting this here blog about science fiction. One of my writing teachers at the time told me that since I love science fiction, and was at that time writing a sci-fi novel, then that’s what my blog should be about. So I set myself the goal of reading the 100 best sci-fi stories of all time and writing reviews about them.

Over time, however, I wanted to write about different topics as well. Still under the impression that a blog couldn’t be about more than one subject, I started a second blog for everything else. Eventually, though, I merged the two because it was too much time and effort to keep up both separately. And I was starting to resent all these blogging rules that I had never consented to or voted on.

So eventually my science fiction blog became more of a personal blog, though I was still reading through my sci-fi list.

Then I started to have another problem.

Since I never wanted to post “content” for the sake of posting “content,” I would end up blocking myself from writing anything at all.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an idea for a post, then stopped myself when I realized I’d need to do a lot more research if I really wanted to make it a good one. Of course, I’d never end up writing the post.

More recently that block has morphed into another block. When I first expanded my blog from science fiction to more personal posts, those posts were mainly about the writing life. But as I started to expand beyond that to writing posts about politics or culture, or other issues I’m interested in, I started to think maybe writers, or at least aspiring novelists, should stay in their lane.

I’ve written a few “culture wars” posts, and while I like those posts and have no intention of deleting them, I also don’t really want to keep writing them. As I wrote in my post about the self-radicalization of daily commentary, it’s all too easy to get sucked into the negative chatter of “our side” versus “their side” all for views and clicks. It’s also easy to convince yourself that you have to share your opinion about everything all the time.

I still don’t have an answer to the question of whether artists should stay in their lane. (Maybe I’ll write a post about it one day!) I believe in free speech and artists are people too. If a singer or actor or writer wants to talk about politics then they are allowed to. And if they don’t want to then they don’t have to.

This is all a really long-winded way of saying that for many years now I’ve found blogging to be quite stressful. While I’m proud of the posts that I have written, more and more I just don’t know what to write about. 

As I mentioned up top, back in 2016 I was told that writers had to blog. Just like I was told that writers had to have social media. These were two requirements for would-be writers to help you “grow an audience” and get your name out there.

But this never made sense to me because I hadn’t written any novels yet! Why the heck would anyone subscribe to me or follow me when there was nothing to follow? (If you are one of the few people who has subscribed to my blog over the years, I am, of course, extremely grateful!)

So a few years ago I finally got rid of social media, and, in that vein, I am going to be stopping blogging for the time being. I might pick it up again later on, who knows, but for now it’s a stop. Not that I’ve been blogging that much recently anyway, but even trying to think of something to post once a month has been taking up too much mental energy.

I’m also going to be stopping my project of reading the 100 top sci-fi novels. That project just really fizzled out for me, and I find I’m stopping more books than I’m finishing. There are still a few on the list that I want to read and will get to, but the project as a whole is done.

I never really felt like blogging was a good fit for me, so I’m putting it in the drawer so to speak.

Thank you to everyone who has read my posts all these years. I’m truly grateful for you and for anyone who has ever commented on a post as well.

And if you’re subscribed to my blog, thank you so much! I have always been extremely grateful for your support. If you’d like to stay subscribed, I will certainly post updates if/when my novel is published *fingers crossed*.

I’m also toying with the idea of essay collections, in which I can still get my thoughts out about different subjects but in a longer, more thought-out format. I’m not making any promises at the moment, but I’m increasingly liking that idea.

Anyways, thank you so much to those who’ve been following my posts regularly.

Have a Happy New Year and I’ll talk to you later!

🙂