I am wondering whether I should create a new blog that’s just about writing and books. I don’t tell anyone the address of this blog — it’s not the most secret blog in the world, but I don’t include it in my signatures or post it in comments or profiles or really anything. I figure it’s a “what I had for lunch” blog and I have faith that the world really doesn’t care, so I haven’t encouraged anyone to read it. But if I want to start making it easy for people to find the other things I’ve written than maybe I have to be more public about it. So then the question is do I start a new blog or just stick with this one and realize that maybe someone is reading it? (Hello, oh, unknown reader! Delighted to have you here, really.)  Decisions, decisions.

I think my uncertainty…huh. I just realized that I’m feeling that “ought to” pressure again. If you’re a writer than you “ought to” have a blog. If you’re going to be successful, than you “ought to” do social media. (Which I do, kinda. Sorta. Once in a while.) To earn money from writing, you “ought to” promote your books like mad. Actually that last is even more of a “you absolutely have to” according to all the experts I read.

I decided, though, a few months back when I was feeling stressed, that my goal was going to be a lot simpler. I’m going to write a million words, and then I’m going to think about what I want to do with my writing. A million words that I let other people read, that is. Fan fiction counts, work posted on fiction press counts, work self-published counts. The million words of journals don’t count. The marketing writing and words written for work over the years don’t count. Just fiction posted publicly. So doing a new blog just got moved to the end of the million words goal. I’ll think about it again when I’ve finished the million words. (The best thing about the million words goal is that I can push everything I don’t want to do to the end of it! Clean the house? Sure, after I’ve finished writing a million words. Ha.)

But I should be writing some of those million words right now. I’m really close to the end of Ghosts and apparently now dragging my feet about finishing. I’m not sure why, except that endings are hard. I want it to finish with that sigh of happiness sensation, and at the moment, I don’t know how to get there. But I never will unless I keep writing, so time to wrap this up.

(This new dynamic blog design makes me want to start randomly adding photos to every entry, just because…so here, random photo. Rory on a cliff in Santa Cruz.)