This one is harder to write!
I belong to the Oro Valley Writer’s Forum, a group of dedicated writers and friends. Experience, abilities, and individual writing goals differ. Yesterday at our monthly coffee meeting, I had a conversation with one of the most highly regarded authors in our group. She mentioned she’d seen a blog post I had written roughly two years ago, and that she liked it. A nice compliment for sure. Then she added I had said in the blog, something to the effect that I “pledged to post a new blog every two weeks.” Although I didn’t remember the post in any detail, I had no reason to doubt that I had written those words. What I also knew was I had not kept that pledge. To this date in 2022, I have posted ten blog entries this year. Even for someone like me who has poor math skills, I know that is less than one blog per month, and far less than bi-weekly.
Responding to my friend, I said something to the effect that I had read blogs were now less in fashion, that followers were hard to get, and that “there is a minimal return on the investment for a blog.” This last sentence meaning, it takes time to write a good blog post and there are few book sales (OK, maybe no sales) as a result of the postings. So there it is, the real rub. At some point, marketing proves to be as hard, if not harder, than writing. Authors want a minimum of two things – We want people to read our work (and enjoy it), and we want people to buy our books. There are many more reasons we write, but I believe those are two are what every author desires. Both longings, at some point, seem to become more difficult to achieve than writing the book.
I have tried and will continue to attempt to accomplish these goals in the future. My longing for readers and sales has not waned. I also intend to make the practice of writing a more fulfilling activity. Not just looking towards the outcome, but also making a greater investment in the joy of the process. When writing becomes difficult, I write less. Maybe that is the opposite of what is needed. The friend mentioned earlier is disciplined to a fault, and as a result, she is also successful. OK, being talented and well trained in her craft is also a big plus.
There are two quotes I enjoy regarding this subject. One comes from the movie A League of Their Own. The character played by Geena Davis tells Tom Hanks, the team’s coach, she was quitting. He asked why? She told him – “It’s just gotten too hard.” Hanks looks at her and says, “of course it’s hard, it wouldn’t be great if it wasn’t hard.”
The second is—“When the words come hard, the weak stop writing. When the writing becomes easy, the strong writer works harder.”
My favorite current read—Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction Edited by Judith Kitchen My next planned self-published book to read, Forever Greta by Harald Lutz Bruckner
Cardboard Heroes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGMHGQ8C
Desert-Writer.blog 
I too have questioned whether it is worth it to write a blog. I check my blog views and KDP account frequently. Often I’m disappointed and discouraged. I think all writers go through this.Here’s one of my favorite Anne Lamott quotes to help keep me going:
“I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publiction is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach,so many surprises.” Keep writing my friend. “the world needs what you’ve got”
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