To Blog or not to Blog, that is the Question

I've toyed with the idea of starting a blog for quite some time. Seems like everyone who's anyone has a blog these days. Having never been one of those jump-on-the-bandwagon kinda gals, I've always come up with valid excuses reasons to support my belief that a blog (in my case, anyway) might just be a more ridiculous idea than the Barack Obama Chia Pet Head.
Therefore, my very first blog post will be devoted to all those reasons why I feel blogging is probably a terrible idea, and why I'm determined to do it anyway.

1.)  If you have time to blog, you have time to work on your novel/clean out the garage/organize your closet/catch up on the laundry/etc.etc. fill in the blank.

You have a valid point, housework-angel-on-my-shoulder. But aside from working on my novel, all those activities listed above are time-sucking chores that I LOATHE. Even without the added daily commitment of a blog, I'd still avoid them like the plague. And now that the first draft of my novel is FINISHED AT LAST (A Labor of Love, but a labor, nonetheless) my hope is that this blog might enable me to connect with other writers. What a blessing that would be since, besides myself, I have only one friend who has ever written anything.


2.)  Why in the world would you waste your time on a blog? Who's gonna read the darn thing anyway?(NO, your mother DOES NOT COUNT!)

This one's tough to argue. Why would I waste my time on something that no one is ever likely to read?  (Not even my mother, truth be told.) The answer is, I don't really know. I've asked myself this same question time and time again, as I pecked away on my novel at four in the morning for the tenth night in a row, or skipped out on a date night with my husband or lunch with my girlfriends or a rainy-Saturday-marathon-viewing of Napoleon Dynamite with my son. I guess its because I know in my heart I have something to say that might be useful to someone out there in Internet-Land. Maybe there's some struggling writer in Iceland or Madagascar or Timbuktu who'll read my words and think Hey, this chick's goin through the same crap as I am, but she's stickin it out and finishing what she started. If she can do it, I can do it, too.

So if my rambling helps one writer finish a project, well, that's good enough for me.
Just send me a cut of the royalties. And name your beautiful, brilliant, headstrong protagonist after me.

3. Do you really need something else in your life to commit to? I mean, you can't even update your Facebook status/Twitter page on a regular basis! What makes you think you can maintain a BLOG?

 NO, I don't really need something else in my life to commit to. Most days I'm stretched too thin already, the same as most women I know (and even a man or two out there, I'm sure.) But commiting myself to writing something, at least on a semi-regular basis, has to be a good habit for me to get into.
Besides, I'm tryin my darndest to give up smoking. So I need a new habit, anyway.

And NO, I don't update my Facebook status/Twitter page as often as some people do. But really, does anyone want to read a tweet like "Thinkin bout makin spaghetti for supper tonight..." or a Facebook status update like "Just saved thirty cents on canned peaches at Kroger!" I confess that I have, on occasion, Facebooked or Tweeted some similar mundane nonsense. But I try not to make a habit of it. A good rule of thumb--if you're updating your facebook status or tweeting more than, say, twenty times a day, your friends and/or followers might appreciate your words more if you save those opportunities for when you really have something to say. "I like grape Kool-Aid" might be what's on your mind, but is that really worth sharing? Depends on your audience, I guess.