Why I Need To Stop Reading Other People's Blogs

First, I want to talk about the fact that I am an awful blogger. Sometimes I don't write for months at a time and during that time so many great (or not so great) things have happened that I should really be writing about and yet, I don't. Some of it stems from not wanting to put the time into doing a post. Posts, depending on the topic, can often take me quite a while to get through. (Other posts, as you might tell from my writing, don't take nearly as long.) Sometimes, I just can't muster the will to write them.  This lack of will I attribute to two things, 1. Too many "real life" things going on to take the time to write and 2. Reading too many blogs. This second reason isn't (very) crazy, allow me to elaborate.

Reading other people's blogs can be unnerving. They have a voice. They have a mission. They have these great posts which are amusing/perceptive/intelligent. It's unnerving because you start to recognize your own posting to be, perhaps, sub-par. You ask yourself, what exactly is my voice? My mission? You start to realize that the posts you're writing most likely reveal exactly how much time you've spent on them. You start to compare yourself. You feel a little self-conscious. You evaluate your writing as not honest enough, not intellectual enough, not funny enough. You start to wonder why you even bother.

I had an ex-boyfriend who once said to me, "Comparison is the root of all evil," and I can see his point.

It's not that I'm insecure in my writing (well, not completely), but instead the problem stems from the belief that writing is something I've been good at.  However, in reading other writers, other bloggers especially, I discover they are better at it.  People who are writing things in ways which make me think "Oh, that is  marvelously written." For normal people this wouldn't be a problem, but for me, following these readings, I seem to lose  my own voice.  I attempt to write in a way similar to the marvelous author's style instead of writing in a way which is mine.  In this attempt at emulating said author, I often find I am lacking.  And it's so frustrating!  It's during the course of these attempts that I accrue many (many) drafts which go unpublished.  (I won't tell you how many drafts of blog entries I have, I'll just say....it's a lot.)

Yes, I confess, I worry about what the whole 5 people who read this blog think of my writing.  I go through these strange phases of wanting to echo other writers, which should be great and push me to do creative things with my writing.  It should allow me to become better, but instead it sometimes shuts me down (or at least makes my posts something which I'm not willing to share with the public).  Eventually, though,  I find my way back to my own voice.  (Typically it's when I let go of whatever tightly wound idea I'm clinging to and just start writing.)

My point is, I'll try to post more in the future.  If my writing seems a little off one day, try to sum it up to me trying to be someone I'm not and look to the next post to be back on target.