Can You Feel My Pain?

Some authors make me dizzy with their recount of pages that they write everyday. "I wrote 15 pages! Boy, am I tired!" they boast, or "I have three chapters done yesterday! I'm busy, busy, busy!" they inform me, in blogs and forums. I once was in a chatroom frequented by an author who came in as sort of a break in between her writing, and her greeting EVERY time was, "Hi, whew, I'm soooooo tired, I just wrote 5000 pages and need a break!" (Okay, I exaggerated the number output but it began to sound like that after about the fifteenth time!) Then there was the author who detailed every single scene and how she then cut 10 and added another 15....

Therefore, I feel rather inadequate because all I have to write and update about is...my wrist ;-P. I wish I could say that the pain is caused by writing 20 pages a day. But I can't even have that as an excuse.

Anyway, this morning, the pain in my wrist is affecting my typing. I have to stand and type because it hurts least at this angle. It's no longer swollen--just painful--and no, I can't rest it, darlings, I have to use a nailgun everyday ;-). Ah well, hairline fractures heal by themselves sooner or later, right? Just kidding, just kidding!

But back to the main thing about writing 20 pages a day. So I admit to being envious of the writers who do this regularly, but do they have to tell everyone too? LOL. Do I tell them, "Wow, I wrote two pages today and whew, am I exhausted!"? I do not. (insert snotty tone of voice, please) Do I announce that "I've just rewrote an entire paragraph and taken out two sentences"? I do not. There you go.

Take Laurell K. Hamilton's blog, for example. I love her Anita Blake series and I get to wander over to her blog (as well as many other author blogs...) when I procrastinate and you can imagine my guilt at reading about page 970 and counting of LKH's work-in-progress. I'm procrastinating, dammit! Don't spoil it!

I have also noticed that some author blogs are also written just for writers alone. There are endless rants about what's going on inside the genre and business; lots of philosophizing of genre and what it means (like: what is romantica vs erotica); plenty of interesting but repetitive scoldings of what's wrong with the industry; gossiping about insider news about which only members of RWA would know.

Which is fine--I don't want anyone to think I'm criticizing those blogs--but as a reader, and I traverse these blogs as one, I find my eyes glazing over at the high dosages of genre and craft. I keep asking myself, do my readers want to read about these topics? And if so, why? As an author promoting myself and my works, my main goal is to get them interested in my world and share a bit of myself, not just as a writer, but also a crazy individual, and perhaps, get a few new readers to try my books.

Blogging, to me, isn't a daily course to teach my readers anything. I don't have anything to teach, anyway. But what I want to do is to share how writing affects my daily life and vice-versa. I'm fortunate enough to love both jobs but trying to balance both in my life can be a challenge, especially if I want to be fair to my business partner. But I don't want every entry to blare out that THIS IS THE PURPOSE OF MY BLOGGING. When you're ranting that loudly, no one cares; they will just talk about your shouting more than your message.

There is an author who loves her genre (erotica) very much and she blogs, not as much about her love, but about how she hates that her genre is considered soft-porn and she hates being considered second-class because she is e-pubbed. Every day. Every entry. After a while, I begin to wonder whether it really is on her mind that much. And the more she rants, the more she brings in many other e-pubbed authors to comment on her blog, and the more cliquish the place became, until I no longer hear anything about this author's writing. So I left.

And that isn't why authors start blogging, is it? My wrist hurts but I don't lose sight of the fact that it's going to be a part of me for a while and the more I whine about it, the less anyone will care. I feel the pain when I swing that hammer or type, and yes, it's very, very annoying not to be able to even turn the car ignition without wincing in pain, but it's okay. I can deal with it my way.

I suppose that's what every blogger is doing. They are dealing with it--whatever "it" is--their way. But must they make me wince about their page counts when I'm trying to procrastinate???! ;-) Why can't they talk about their boring wrist or dogs or luggage problems like me, huh, huh? Don't they know they're supposed to be entertaining me so I can avoid writing?! Tsk.

Perhaps you can tell me why some blogs work for you and some don't. I have this morbid fascination about other people's procrastinating habits, LOL. Perhaps I bore you to tears and you want to rant about me! Okay, now that I'm done whining about my wrist this morning, off I go to climb a roof and yell philosophical curses at stupid crapenters....

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