If you haven't heard of Kessler, you may learn more about her and her writing by visiting her web site (laurenkessler.com), or on the blog she co-authors with her husband (thinhouse.net), or at the place I'm most apt to look her up, at her online magazine (etude.uoregon.edu). It was on the Etude site, winter edition, where I found Kessler's essay, "The Reluctant Blogger;" a well-written, well-thought-out rant of sorts on the blogosphere.
In her essay, Kessler touches on the trouble with blogs, or at least she touches on the trouble she had with a foray into blogging, which happens to reflect the trouble I am having with my blog. She writes:
"...writers value (and attempt to practice) good writing, and it takes time to write well, and it takes time to think through ideas so that you can write well, and ideas that merit such thought and literary attention do not often or regularly occur to the 99.99 percent of us who are non-geniuses. Yet the content-hungry blog demands new posts, if not daily then way too often..."Kessler's first came into blogging in 2007 when she accepted an invitation to be a week-long guest blogger for Powell's [book emporium]. Kessler explains how she spent six hours a day every day for the five days of her blogging week writing her daily posts.
"I did nothing else that week except laundry...I was exhausted."Each of her posts, she said, had to have a theme and each one had to be nicely constructed, carefully written, edited and revised because that's what writers do. It's true. We construct, we edit, we revise, and then we revise again and again and again. Call it anal. Others have.
And that brings me back to the trouble with my blog. Don't get me wrong; I love my blog. But lately, I've been entertaining the thought of hitting that one little button on the dashboard labeled: DELETE BLOG.
I've resisted so far, but I'm not convinced this wouldn't be a bad move for me right now. See, I've got other things to think about right now, other things that need writing, which is to say there are things percolating upstairs that aren't destined for the blog; things that can't be told in 500-to-800 word essays all nicely packaged by theme with circular conclusions and (hopefully) no typos.
I may not have a lot of laundry, but neither do I have unlimited amounts of time. Or maybe I'm just outgrowing my blog as an outlet for my literary meanderings.
I will, over the next few weeks, continue to ponder the fate of this blog that has served mostly as a joyful outlet for my creative instincts -- for almost two years now. But I'm inching my way toward a creative shift. And, as Kessler so aptly points out, I just had to share.
I'm not sure, yet, what this shift means for future of this blog. When I figure it out, I'll let you know. Sorry Lauren.
