Babel Clash

Brent, I have to violently disagree with you, and not just because we’ve framed this as a literary deathmatch, but also because you’re WRONG, so WRONG.

Your examples are poor. JRR would definitely have blogged had he had the technology available, but he was totally a console guy, played way too much Halo, and wouldn’t allow a PC in his home. Shakespeare? Have you read the sonnets? Obviously primitive blogs. Some of them he even printed out from his Sinclair ZX80, they have some of the original silvery whorls of printer tape in a glass case in the foyer of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. FACT.

I agree with you (grudgingly and with a massive sneer) that not every writer should blog. That writers shouldn’t feel it’s the default position, and that these days publishers are wont to encourage writers to blog/run a website and therefore do some of their own publicity and marketing (although why shouldn’t they?) The thing to avoid is that classic rather rubbish-looking template-based website with a post saying, “yeah! I’m blogging,” and one comment, then three posts the first day, one the next week, and one five months later saying, “yeah! I’m back! Sorry about the break!” Then nothing else ever since 2005. That does no one any good. You should decide your level of involvement and stick to it.

Whether the time a writer spends blogging actually makes sense commercially is a difficult question to answer, and will undoubtedly vary widely from writer to writer. It’s very unlikely you’ll be able to make anything significant from the “monetisation” of a blog (ads or amazon affiliation, that type of thing) even if you have a great deal of traffic. It’s also pretty unlikely you’ll sell huge numbers of extra copies directly because of your web presence – people will generally come to your website having read your books, rather than the other way around. But the benefits of blogging, or, indeed, any level of public involvement like signings, events, and conventions are a lot more subtle than simply how many books you sell directly through them. It’s the goodwill, the feeling of involvement on the part of both writer and readers, and the general raising of profile.

The argument that 1000 words of blog = 1000 words less of novel is a bit silly, frankly beneath even you, and belongs with those guys who say, “how dare George Martin take a crap, he should be spending that wasted crapping time on Dance with Dragons.” Writing a blog and writing a novel are very different activities. For me, blogging often almost serves as a break from the more pressured actual writing, or a way to get the juices flowing a bit when I feel like I can’t face the current book. Rarely will you sit down for two hours of self-flagellation to produce 18.3 words of blog. It allows you to get some involvement from readers and others, to discuss things, to get out of the lonely world of your own brain for a little while. Writing is a lonely business, and that element of social interaction (even via the faceless interweb) is valuable. You can get obsessed with your blogging, of course, with the instant gratification and the rush of getting response from readers who are otherwise endlessly a vague group, as if seen through a mist. But all things in moderation, and there’s no more harm in it than choosing to spend some of your day going for a run, or reading the newspaper. That is, none. Some writers who blog a bit have delayed novels. Some writers who blog an awful lot don’t.

But, you know, every author is different, every blog is different, and we all have to make up our own minds about what’s worthwhile commercially, artistically and, indeed, what we enjoy. Stargate Exec Producer Joe Mallozzi blogs every day about the show, about food, about books, about his responses to spam emails, a lot of it is very funny and he has a big following as a result. Hal Duncan blogs more rarely but at pretty incredible length and level of insight on issues of literature and semantics. I try to blog once or twice a week about what’s happening with the books, about films and video games, about the process of writing and publishing, about getting hit over the head with a banister and anything else of note.  I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, and I don’t reckon blogging has cost the public a huge amount of published work from me, but I have had a lot of fun doing it.  Who knows, maybe some folks have had just a little bit reading it as well…?

So, yeah, Brent, maybe you just don’t get it. Although that news page you run on your website does look just a little teeny bit like a blog to me.

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