Using My Blog as a Writing Journal is Probably Not a Good Idea

Winter forest bathing?

Yesterday I threw out an idea here about starting to use this blog as a writers' journal, a place to work on preliminary writing and drafts.

"...if you go back to the early days of lit blogging," I said, "writers sometimes did use blogs as journals. Even writing journals for experimenting with writing." 

It seemed like an artie bloggie thing to do, to say nothing of being time and energy efficient.

"It would be a multiplier," I said, "one action that meets two goals."

I've Thought Better of That 

Then I remembered that many literary journals consider material used in blogs as "published" and will not consider it for publication themselves. The Medium platform accepts previously published work. In fact, it appears that some people there publish the same things on Medium publications and their private Substacks.

So, there's no issue with me starting something here, revising it, and submitting it to a Medium publication. I could even just submit this post you're reading right now as is. (UPDATE: 3/10/26. This appears to be the case at Medium overall. Individual publications may have different guidelines, however. And they may change their guidelines, as is the case here, if you scroll down far enough. Another version is a best bet.) 

But most of the other places I submit to, no. I am not confident that even just working on something here and refining it elsewhere would be acceptable in those cases.

Why, Yes, I Am Obsessing About This

Nonetheless, I won't be working here on the winter forest bathing essay idea I came up with after posting about the subject on Facebook yesterday. Posting on Facebook is also considered publishing by some publications, by the way. 

This situation inspired a writing idea, but I won't say anything about it. I've got to go write it down in my private writer's journal, the one you don't see.

Attention For Original Content

Today Original Content begins a six-week stint as one of the Featured Blogs at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators website. Look at the blogroll right there on the main page.

Time Management Tuesday: Know What You're Just Not Going To Do, And Don't Do It

Once  upon a time, long, long, long ago, I worked in an office for three extension professors. I was their lackey, to be perfectly honest, and I always had way more lackey work to do than I had time.

We would have meetings in which one professor or another, or sometimes all three, would get all excited about this project or that, and one professor or another, or sometimes all three, would say things like, "Why don't you get started on that, Gail." We'd all go our separate ways, I'd "get started on that" and never hear about it again.

I've never made any claims to be brilliant, but I'm not stupid, either. Eventually, I learned to guess which projects they were asking me to work on that they would never follow through on, and I just didn't do them. Not because I was a layabout, but because I just couldn't. I had to do all the things that they were going to follow through on, and there was too much of that, as it was. I cannot recall ever running into any problems because I've my decision-making. In fact, I even told one of the professors I did it. What upset him was not that I was doing it, but that I could do it--that they were coming up with plans they weren't following through on and doing so in such a way that I could predict what they weren't going to do.

Predicting what we're not going to do is something we should be doing for ourselves.

A case in point: Last year I had this exciting plan to start an environmental blog to help market the Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook. It was going to be set-up as if it were the official blog of The Earth's Wife, the environmental  magazine in the book, and it was going to be written in the voice of Walt Marcello, one of the characters. He is not a stereotypical environmentalist, and he has a strong voice with a push-the-envelope sense of humor. I was going to have him comment on environmentally-related news stories and there would be a blog roll of environmental websites. It would be easy, I thought, because I wouldn't update more than once a week or so, and, because I would be using recent news stories for content, I wouldn't have to do much research. It was going to be marvelous. People would love it. I would have lots of readers, and, as a result, sell lots of eBooks.

Well, fortunately it took us longer than expected to publish STP&S, giving me time to become more rational about that plan. First off, the likelihood of any new blog getting much attention these days isn't very great, forget about it developing a big following. Just as there are more books being published than the market can bear, there are more blogs being published than blog readers can read. There's way, way too much competition now in almost every subject. So that would be a big strike against that project. In addition, I already spend a lot of time on this blog, more than most writers do. (I don't consider myself a writer who has a blog. I am a writer and a blogger.) Updating nearly every day with sometimes short essay-length material is a lot. In addition, I'm already maintaining a second blog at Goodreads. (I just discovered I can link to my individual blog posts there from outside, though you may have to belong to Goodreads to read them. Don't know about that.) That blog is only updated 2 or 3 times a month, but still, I am already maintaining two blogs.

A third blog would take up valuable time and energy without providing me with much benefit, since I couldn't seriously expect many more readers. This was definitely a case where I could predict that I either wasn't going to follow through with this project, or I was going to follow through in a poor manner. I decided not to do it.

However, some of what I wanted to do with that new blog I can do here, which is why you can now see an Environmental Sites & Author Blogs section on my blog roll. Once a week I'll be doing environmental posts that fit in in some way with writing and/or reading. We'll see if this has much impact on the marketing of Saving the Planet & Stuff.  At the very least, it will be far, far more time and energy efficient for me than starting and maintaining an entirely separate blog.

So maybe what this Time Management Tuesday post should have been called is Know What You're Just Not Going To Do, Don't Do It, And Do Something Else Instead.

What? There Is A YA Blogging Community?

Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that it came to my attention only very recently that there is a community of YA litbloggers separate from children's litbloggers. You can find a...ah...few...of them at YA Book Blog Directory.

Only One "E"

I'm going to push on and take care of the blogs with "E" names at the NESCBWI site, because there's only one person with an "E" name, though he has two blogs.

David Elzey has an excellent review blog, The Excelsior File, that I've been familiar with for years. Many children's litbloggers write, essentially, book recommendations, because they have a policy of only posting "positive" reviews. Nothing wrong with recommending books. David Elzey's reviews are more like literary criticism, though. He is not a fanboy.

He has another blog, fomagrams, that is new to me. It includes his reading list for the two years he was working on his MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults.

I think I have something like 50 NESCBWI blogs left to visit. I must think two or three times before starting a project like this again.

And Now For More Of The Letter "D"

That's "D" as in NESCBWI blogs from authors whose names begin with the letter "D."

First up, Betsy Devany's blog entitled...Betsy Devany's Blog. Betsy appears to be a pre-published NESCBWI member. She has been a finalist and had an honorable mention manuscript for the Tassy Walden Awards. That's a bigger deal here in Connecticut than in other parts of the world, so for those of you who don't know, Tassy Walden winners have gone on to publication. According to Betsy's blog, she attends a lot of writer events. She's got a lot on last weekend's NESCBWI conference.

Ann Marie DiVecchia has three blogs, all relating to art. Only one of them has been updated since last summer, Smells Like Crayons, a group blog for nine New Hampshire and Maine illustrators.

Marissa Doyle, who writes who historical and romantic fiction "with a magical twist," is a contributor to an interesting looking blog, Nineteen Teen Being a Teen in the Nineteenth Century. Recently, they've done posts on "the Grand Tour," a term those of us who read Georgette Heyer in our youth will be familiar with, and Queen Victoria's pets.

BroccoliPower hasn't been updated in around a year and a half and only had around 6 posts before then. It was going to be a journal about finding a publisher for a manuscript.

And that concludes the letter "D."

She Was One Of The Few Out There

Earlier this month, Cynsations did an interview with Elizabeth Kennedy of About.com: Children's Books. Back in 2002 when I started Original Content, I did an Internet search of children's literature blogs. Elizabeth Kennedy's About.com site was one of about a half dozen that turned up. That's all there was back then.

Melissa Stewart and I have crossed paths a number of times at New England Society of Children's Book Writer and Illustrator events. In mid-June she did a guest post at Cynsations in which she talked about writing nonfiction. Particularly interesting was her explanation of the difference between style and tone in writing.

I think some of what she has to say could apply to writing fiction, too.

John Christopher Tribute Coming Up

Tom Angleberger is planning a John Christopher tribute for Wired's GeekDad blog. Tom (also known in some circles as Sam) has covered John Christopher before. As have I, though I would describe myself as a Christopher dabbler rather than a fan.

I Nearly Set The House On Fire

I was roasting some tomatoes for tomorrow night's dinner while doing that last blog post. That was a long post. It took a while. Then I went to some news' sites. Then I got up and wandered toward the stairs, where I heard the oven timer going off. I'm guessing it had been beeping away for thirty or forty minutes, anyway. I went tearing upstairs where the kitchen didn't look too bad. A little steam but no real smoke. If I had just turned off the oven and left the carbonized tomatoes there to cool, everything would have been okay.

But I didn't.

I turned off the oven, opened the door, and then we started seeing some real smoke. We had to unlock the back door before I could take the pan outside, the smoke detector went off, as did a fire alarm, we got a call from the security people, and another jelly roll pan may be history. Only time will tell. And now I have to come up with something else for dinner tomorrow night.

Grammar Monkeys And The Subjunctive Mood

Grammar Monkeys is a blog that's brand-spanking new to me, and it's exactly what I was talking about when I posted about changing the blogs you follow in order to bring some spark into your own.

You're probably thinking, But, Gail, seriously, how can a grammar blog inspire a post for your own blog? Oh, easily, easily, dear ones.

Note this Grammar Monkey post on the subjunctive. Now, my grasp of the subjunctive is very weak. However, I feel warmly toward it because it always makes me think of my father-in-law. When I first met him, his son, my boyfriend, warned me that his father, a civil engineering professor and textbook author, was going to ask me about the subjunctive. "He knows you're an English major, and he's always asking people about the subjunctive, anyway. Be ready."

My response was, What the Hell? Be ready for what?

Well, sure enough, soon after meeting, my future father-in-law did bring up the subjunctive. "It is my favorite mood," he said.

I've never known anyone else with a favorite mood. Actually, except for an editor at Putnam, I doubt anyone else I've known knew what a mood was.

So, there you have it, a blog post inspired by a grammar blog. Go forth and look for those new blogs!

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for the link.

UPDATE: Oops. I've told the subjunctive story here before. About four and a half years ago. Well, this just proves my original point, that if you've blogged long enough, you'll have read it all and blogged about it all.

Keeping The Magic In Blogging

Original Content's eighth anniversary was the beginning of this month, and instead of doing an anniversary post, I blogged about Sally. Social networking masters would point out that I missed a golden opportunity to generate some traffic at my blog with some book giveaways, maybe a blog tour, something. Anything.

My only excuse is that when anyone has experienced a great many anniversaries of any type, it's hard to get up a lot of energy for another one. Or sometimes even notice. (Though if Civil Guy sees this, be warned--we're getting out of town the weekend of July 23rd. At least, I am.)

I wouldn't have even noticed the eighth anniversary at all, but Greg Pincus did a post at The Happy Accident on what he described as The Blahgs--"the feeling you get when you lack the desire to keep on blogging." I've been hearing about this for a while now. It's not unusual to read of bloggers needing to take a break, needing to redefine why they're blogging in order to go on. I wanted to respond to Greg's post, the reponse involved figuring out how long I've been doing this, and there you go.

Meandering along here, I think a big part of litblogging is responding to material on the Internet--other blogs, literary columns, etc. I follow--superfically--a great many blogs, and something I've been noticing happening is that I often have days when I've waded through as much as I can without feeling a lot of excitment about anything I've seen. I've been doing this for eight years (See? This is the point where I checked to see how long O.C. has been around and learned I'd missed an anniversary), and what I think has happened is that I'm beginning to feel as if I've read it all before. Certainly, I have read a lot of it before. I have responded to a lot of it before. Yes, I can never read too much about Shirley Jackson and will probably always have a response. But another book controversy...another so-called celebrity author...another vampire story...another barking award...another list of some kind...I think anyone can see that if bloggers have been around long enough, they may very well get to the point that they just don't have anything more to say on a wide variety of subjects.

Now, I actually do have a bit of an assist for this problem--start reading different blogs. Because I'm a writer and not a pure lit blogger, I have some different interests I can call upon. In addition to kidlit blogs, I follow some author blogs, some writing blogs, and right now I'm following some editor and agent blogs. So I do get exposed to a little more variety of thought than someone who follows only one kind of blog. I've also had to drop some blogs over the years, usually because I felt the material covered was covered in other blogs, sometimes in many other blogs. You can't keep taking on more and more blogs because of that thing about time--within an individual life, anyway--being finite. You have to cull the pack every now and then.

So I would like to suggest that change may be what it takes to keep a blog going.

Yeah, That's Going To Happen

Read Roger has a discussion going about blogs helping to create book buzz. In years past, I used to talk about blogs letting the traditional review journals do their traditional work of reviewing new books. Blogs, I insisted, could create a new reason for existence for themselves and fill a need by focusing on older books. (Which, these days, can mean last winter's.) Blogs could do something different and unique by reminding readers of books they'd missed, books that had value, books that were overlooked. Instead of trying to do what review journals do, this different medium could try to do something different.

Read the situation that inspired Roger's post and the comments he received. Does it sound to anyone else as if the blogosphere has been sucked right into the "big opening" that the publishing industry seems committed to right now? That the decision is made, a large portion of the blogosphere is supporting the status quo and will chat up the new until a new new comes along?

You may tell me if I'm being jaded and harsh.

Moderation In All Things

I've been getting spammed regularly these last couple of months. By the end of this week, I'll have seven years worth of posts archived here. I'll never live long enough to clean all the spam out of them. In fact, I just found spam on a bunch of the posts from my very first week in March, 2002.

So we've had to add moderation to the comments on all posts more than seven days old. Why seven? That's about how many posts turn up on the first screen, and I'll easily see if I have any spam there.

This will mean that late comers to the party won't be able to see their comments come up right away. However, it also means that I'll see their comments. Sometimes I realize that someone has commented on a two or three week old post, and I ended up missing it. So that, at least, will be fun for me.

In Case You Want To Know...

...how to blog, check out How To Blog at Slate. Pay particular attention to "Add something new" and the bit under "Write casually but clearly" about not going on too long.

I was going to go on about that for a while, but it doesn't seem appropriate now, does it?

Notice My New Fan?

We were hit with a spammer in the comments' section last night. It appears to be from some kind of marketer, though what s/he was marketing was lost on me. The comment suddenly went up in many of my posts back until the beginning of September and in a few places before that.

We are considering our options.

Do Bloggers Who Review Even Want The Same Kind Of Respect Print Reviewers Receive? I Mean, Received?

In Will Blogs Save Books?, Lisa Warren opens with news about two more newspapers cutting back or possibily even eliminating book reviews. After which she asks, "...why don't we as readers give book reviews on blogs as much respect as book reviews in major market papers?" Then she goes on to advise bloggers on how they can write reviews that will sound more like the print reviews that nobody wants any more.

Also, I wasn't terribly surprised to hear that The Hartford Courant showed its book editor the door. The Courant is in the midst of cutting its staff by...ah...some huge percentage. The Courant cut back on the space it gave to books a year or two ago and given the way things are going with book reviews over all, I sort of expected its book editor was on her way out.

The paper rarely covered children's literature, so I don't think the loss of its book editor will have much impact on kidlit in Connecticut. We have the largest children's literature archive in the northeast, plus at least two very good annual children's literature events--The Connecticut Children's Book Fair and The Rabbit Hill Festival of Literature. Children's literature is well covered here.

Three Robbers Blog Tour--Conclusion

Well, I'm exhausted. I never thought I'd live to see the day that I'd grow tired of talking about myself, but I am, indeed, weary. I'm sure I'll get over it, though.

I am very grateful to all my blog hosts. Two of them fit their hosting duties in before leaving on vacation. Two worked me around the ALA convention. Two had trouble getting e-mails to me. Two volunteered to host without being asked. One dear blogger contacted me when I was trying to contact a host on a listserv (because of that e-mail problem) to offer to fill in if needed. Seriously, everyone was wonderful. I'm not just saying that to be a polite guest.

If you missed any of the interviews and won't be able to sleep at night until you've read them all, here is a round-up of links:

Books Together
Sam Riddleburger
Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Jen Robinson's Book Page
Big A, little a
The Miss Rumphius Effect
A Fuse #8 Production

Tomorrow is another day. I'll be on to new things.

Three Robbers Blog Tour--Day Seven

The seventh and final stop on my blog tour for A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers is A Fuse #8 Production. Betsy and I talk about why chapter books don't get more attention than they do and why some of the attention they do receive involves parental complaints.

Betsy had to work in this stop around the ALA convention, plus I was still having e-mail problems at the end of the week, which caused a little flurry of worry for us. So I'm most grateful to her for hosting today.

Tomorrow I'll do a little round-up of blog tour activity for those of you who may have missed some stops or who enjoy reruns.

The Three Robbers Celebration--4th of July Weekend Book Giveaway

My own book giveaway closed yesterday. We just did the drawing, and I notified the winners. However, you can still take advantage of the book giveaway my publisher, G. P. Putnam, is offering through my blog tour hosts over the 4th of July weekend. Each day a book will be given away through a different host, and, since the tour concludes tomorrow, I'll offer one here on Sunday so that every day of the holiday weekend is included.

So if you entered my original drawing and haven't heard from me today, or if you've just decided this minute that you'd like to try to win one of my books, you have three more chances:

Today: The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Saturday: A Fuse #8 Production.

Sunday: Back here at Original Content.