Writing vs Blogging

Tamar has closed up shop. This makes me a little sad, because I loved reading her posts -  about her son, her parenting, about moving cross country, about her writing - but I sort of get it too. She has a number of reasons, many about lines in the sand and what's appropriate or not to post, but one of them is that she is writing fiction now and it fulfills some of the same needs the blog once did.

I'm not about to follow suit but it has added to some thinking I've been doing about blogging. A number of other things have also made me question the time I spend blogging - talking (emailing) with Trish about her new column writing gig, joining Dawn's new Insecure Writer's group, reading (once again) Dawn's call for submissions to her op ed section in Literary Mama... I can't help wondering if I should be spending the time I blog writing pieces for these sorts of markets.

But then I remember that I don't really spend a whole lot of time on these posts - I don't actually use this blog as a place to 'practice' quality writing (is that bad? am I inviting myself to get into/maintain sloppy habits?), I use it to record things - about Liam, about being pregnant, about my thoughts about blogging or writing or studying or whatever - as well as to communicate, have a presence in the 'blogosphere', and every now and then to rant about something.

And you know what? The periods in my life when I haven't kept some kind of journal - online or off - have later frustrated me. I actually do go back to them to check things. In fact, there've been occasions when I've gone back to this blog and it's predecessor and not found stuff - because it's from before I discovered blogging (ie from last century) and been quite put out. It's so much easier to search through, in general, than my handwritten journals of the past.

Of course, being online does limit what I write. Every now and then I write a post to a private (but still online) journal that I keep just for when I want to record something but don't want to make it public, but mostly those entries simply go unwritten. Still, all in all this format is working for me at the moment. I think I'll keep it up. I'd like to add 'but I'll also put more time and effort into writing for those other sorts of markets' but the truth is, with six weeks left to my intended deadline to get my uni work done, and another 6 weeks (give or take) until Liam's little sibling is due, I probably shouldn't make any promises to myself that I won't keep. Still, you never know...