An article and podcast from a former blogger.

I listened to the podcast first. It was in my iPod after updating yesterday, among the other Slate Magazine Podcasts. Its title sent a chill down my spine, “Stop Blogging, Start Writing.”

But the interview with the author left me with the sneaking suspicion that her “last entry” was just an attempt to get some publicity. She sounded like a giggly airhead. She admitted that she had trouble “following up” with potential assignments. Hell, she claims she’d been contacted by “several” New York publishers interested in books, yet she’d managed to come away without a single contract. Not much of a professional writer, if you ask me. Any unknown who sits around waiting for a publisher to play the ball for her doesn’t deserve to succeed as a writer.

Good things may come to those who wait, but book contracts don’t.

Still, the idea of blogging taking up too much creative juice, leaving nothing for other writing, remains with me. I looked up the article that led to the podcast interview:

“Why I shut down my blog” by Sarah Hepola. She seems to echo many of my sentiments, but spoils the piece with her last sentence:

Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started.

Blogging and television? No wonder she doesn’t have any time to write! Or maybe that was some kind of joke? Ha-ha?

I don’t think that author will stay away from blogging for long. It’s rather addictive — at least I think so. Something interesting happens to you and you want to write it up in your blog, partially to remember it and partially to share it with others. You learn something new, something that could help others and you want to share it in your blog. You have a deep thought or a revelation of major importance and you want to shout it out in your blog pages to see if anyone else agrees or wants to argue with you about it.

But I do agree that blogging sucks something out of a person. That something isn’t lost, though. It’s just stored away for the future.