This article.

This article winks at me from across the room, then leaves with someone else. It asks me out to dinner and dodges the check. It promises tickets to a show that isn’t playing. It snatches my last Rolo and while we huddle side by side in a muddy, war-torn trench, it tells me we don’t stand a chance.

In a shell, I’m the nut and it’s the cracker and it splintered my little blog-bound heart into a million tiny pieces.

I admit going through a similar process to what Carol describes. Writing has always been in my life, but I felt that putting my work out there was the next step. In fact, I believed I’d be hiding in the dark ages by not leaping into the light. That’s how I came to birth my blog and as is human nature, I continue to nurture it despite the pain it causes me.

“Next, they fall in love with the blog, and then spend way too much time on it.”

It’s almost three years old now, and yes I’m in love. Not because—“…it’s so empowering, pushing that ‘publish’ button on whatever you want to say…that it becomes addictive.”—but because I don’t feel alone. It’s not just me anymore. I went from what was, in my mind, selfish, to sharing, hopeful my words would entertain and inspire. At times, I even dare to believe I’d be letting you down should I vanish into thin air.

“It’s a dying niche because semi-literate, half-baked posts you dash off in 15 minutes for search robots to index don’t work any more.”

Piercing music screams in my head, reaching its crescendo as the shards of my heart are flattened and ground into a fine dust by this suggestion. Half-baked…dashed off in 15 minutes…I’m writing for robots?

Ouch.

But, I read Carol’s article through several times, washing it down with a tall glass of cool coherence. And you might be surprised to know that once I’d swallowed the pulp and circumstance, I concurred—If you want to write articles, you should of course, write articles.

But if you, like me, simply want to write of myth and whimsy to see where the wind takes you, there’s no need for a plummeting spirit. Tice’s advice doesn’t apply to you. Just keep doing what you’re doing because well, it makes you so darn extraordinary.

All bolded quotes taken from “Why You Should Stop Writing Blog Posts (and What to Do Instead) by Carol Tice at makealivingwriting.com

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