My Weblog: Choosing Topics

It's obvious to anyone familiar with my writing style that I'm not much of an advance planner. I've always been the same with blogging, too. I blog once weekly on my own website, and then once or twice a month here at the home of the Femmes. Usually I just shake my fingers over the keyboard and a topic pops out.

I seldom have time to read a lot of other writers' blogs, but when I do, I'm astonished at the range and intimacy of what others choose to share with the world. I'm not casting aspersions on anyone else's selections; I'm expressing amazement.

I don't know if it's an "age thing" or not (everything is increasingly related to age, especially in my birthday month), but younger writers share more than I'm comfortable sharing. I don't want to involve an audience in my creative process. I don't want to let them know when I'm having trouble with a scene, or how many words I wrote today. I will share very little of my private life.

It's hard to believe anyone would be interested, in the first case, and it's hard to believe I'd have much left for myself, in the second. My books are my connection with the public world, and there's plenty personal in them, if that's what people are looking for. Everything I believe, and everything I've experienced, finds its way into the books.

As for posting details of my working life, I consider that boring. Some days I write three pages, some days ten. Maybe if I committed myself to posting this daily, I'd write more out of sheer embarrassment? I'll have to think about that. Do you really want to know about the days I write, "Then she heard a knock at the door," followed by ten minutes of me sitting there wondering who knocked?

I didn't think so.