An article on Slate talks about Blogoholism – or Blogaholics – which I think is a better term.

William Gibson famously quit blogging saying it stopped him from writing novels. Others have become addicted to blogging, either reading or writing them.

It’s a pretty confused piece on Slate about how bad/addictive blogging is yet how it can make writing fun again.

But blogging got me in the habit of writing despite all the associated BS. Free from worrying about regular updates, networking through links, flame wars, coming up with snarky commentary, compulsively checking Technorati and my site meter, I had nothing to worry about but my craft.

Then it dips into advice on writing moving on to what’s wrong with blog writers.

Bloggers tend to spend way to much time focusing on themselves and on the act of blogging.

In closing it suggests two points, one is a retread on the blogging gets you loving writing the other says:

barbaricus, on the other hand, points to the value of blogs when you need deep background on a specific subject.

If I needed deep background on a subject I don’t think blogs alone could meet that need. Despite the strange structure of the piece it got me thinking about addiction and blogs. I don’t read a lot of blogs so I’ve no issue about that. I write a lot on my two blogs, every day on CR every few days on CC. Everyday? Right, so I’m pretty much addicted to writing blog pieces, but not reading blogs.

CR is not so self focused as say boingboing (today Cory sneezed) but I’m sure some of that exists here. Most of it is random net fluff, with some politics thrown in. That said it still takes time to write, I would say that I spend too much writing on CR and not enough on my short stories or novels.

I really need to cut back and spend the blog time elsewhere.

http://www.slate.com/id/2140609/

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