My Blog Thinks I'm A Writing Whore.
Blog: Hey, where the heck is this week’s post?
Me:It’s over on Schmutzie’s blog.
Blog: Who the hell is Schmutzie? And why are you on her blog?
Me: Schmutzie's great. I'm guest blogging. You’ve never heard of this?
Blog: If by “guest blogging” you mean whoring yourself out, no I haven't
heard of this.
Me: I’m not a whore!
Blog: How is putting yourwriting on another person’s blog not cheating on me?
Me: It's not. Guest blogging is common practice. This was my first guest post...I actually thought you might be happy for me.
Blog:Writing whore! I want to cheat too! Find me a guest blogger! And make sure it’s someone good!
Me: Like who?
Blog: I don’t know any bloggers other than you, Daria. Do you know why? Because I’m faithful! But I'm putting myself out there. Clearly, we have an open relationship here!
Me: Okay, good luck with that. In the meantime, dear readers, please check out this week's post: Losing my Guest Post Virginityover on Schmutzie’s blog.
Blog: Yeah, go to Schmutzie’s blog …but you’ll feel dirty afterwards! Hey, don’t you turn off the computer—
Here's an excerpt from the post:
See the whole post here at schmutzie.com.
I’m a novelist by trade, so I tend to spend years in my office, or worse, in my head writing about shit that is not real. This is the quickest route to insanity that I can fathom!
Five years (about how long it takes me to bang out a book) oozed by with no feedback, no interaction, no readers. And because I’m particularly partial to self-torture, I’m also writing the film adaptation for my novel — another exercise in spending years, mostly alone, producing draft after draft of a movie that has a 50% chance of shooting this decade!
Enter, or in my case, stumble, trip, and face plant into the World of Blogging…
Here’s why I immediately fell in love with blogging: I’m forced to engage with the world — probe, think about, and find humour in the everyday. No more lollygagging around in my pyjamas for years on end because I’m “working on a book”. Newsflash: you can do both!I’m writing fresh content every week — which is HUGE for someone who complains about writers’ block or not having a publisher for her newest book — all the while pulling the cork out of another bottle of wine.Readership and feedback are immediate. When people start to subscribe and share what you’ve written it’s exhilarating!As an artist, I’m fortunate enough to make (some) money from books and screenwriting. It’s so freeing and valuable to produce and share content without the express purpose of trying to make money from it.Blogging forces me to take risks and say fuck it to the possibility of failure. That’s probably my favourite thing about blogging. Some posts that you love more than your first born child will bomb; others that you rattled off because you had to get some content up fast will explode — like the overfilled diaper of that first born kid.