Writing About Writing… Or Not

Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about writing (for writers), and I haven’t written as much for readers as I probably should. If you saw my hard drive and sifted through it (it would take months) you’d find numerous files with half written, or even completely written, blog posts in them. Because here’s the thing — things the piss me off always generate something written. I just don’t always post them all. Sometimes I don’t post them because no one needs to see me have a tantrum over things that drive me crazy, or topics that infuriate me. So I keep them safely tucked away on a drive somewhere where they’ll either be found after I’m dead, or erased never to be read again. Or they might spark something good while I’m alive. You just never know.

Writing in this sense is self-therapy to help me get over the things making me angry so I can set the anger aside and move past it. Sometimes I’ll revisit the same file to add or augment it, but again, not because I ever have any intention of sharing.

I do the same things with ideas. I have files upon files of book and story outlines. Some that have seen publication, some that never will. I have partly completed short fiction and scenes that never made it into finished novels. I have every novel I’ve ever written – even the ones that will never be published because they weren’t good enough. I have character sketches and interviews and pre-writing. All things that have no need to see the light of day.

So what am I writing for readers? Books, articles, and short fiction, certainly, but not nearly as many blog posts as I would like.  Perhaps I’ll make it a point to only write for my readers for the rest of 2015. It appears I’ve grown weary of writing for writers and talking about writing. So it goes.