First Draft: A Blogging Series

Over the past few weeks, prolific blogger and author, Tim Challies, has posted a series of tweets and an article lamenting the changes he is seeing in the blogosphere. In short, writers are simply abandoning blogs, at least blogs that are personally owned. I believe he is right and as I’ve thought about it in regards to my own site, I know why I have not posted as frequently and it is simple, time.

It takes time to write, then edit, and then have someone else edit. Writing often takes research and reading and referencing. Then you have to upload it, add links if you have any, find a picture that works, and make sure when you hit publish it actually publishes correctly. That has been my experience and I’ve had to weigh whether or not I can spend that amount of time and effort on a blog or if it would be best spent writing articles for other outlets where there’s an editor in place and someone who can take the time to upload the post, etc. And evaluating my own blogging habits has also revealed a level of fear.

I think part of the desire to write and edit and rewrite is because people are actually reading my words and I don’t want to publish something with errors or something that could prove to be unhelpful. I want my work to be readable and relate-able. I also fear the Lord—I will give an account for every word typed on this site. Yet, I also believe there’s an unhealthy fear. I don’t want to be thought of as a terrible writer. I want to polish my craft and make sure that the commas are in the right place and the grammar isn’t awful. I hesitate then to publish because I want to look good. That’s a terrible reason not to write. In my heart of hearts I desire to serve you, my reader, and also in the back of my mind I wonder if I’m good enough. Did that sentence need a comma? Am I using passive voice? Yes, those are the things I worry about.

I imagine that temptation to fear pushing publish isn’t isolated to me. I know it’s not. I know others fear but for other reasons. Mine is about grammar but I know others would be about content. People hesitate to write because they want to make sure it appeals to the current issues of the day or that the reader would enjoy reading the content rather than writing about something the author actually enjoys writing about.

So, what you’ve stumbled upon here is a first draft. (Actually, my computer froze and I lost the last two paragraphs. So, this part is new. See, writing takes time!!) Over the next few months, I’m going to write first drafts and post them. No editing. No scheduling when it’s done. I’m going to write when I can during the week, giving myself about 30 minutes and then post it. I will look for a photo but I’m not going to spend more than 5 minutes hunting. I will write about whatever my heart desires: my time with the Lord, the weather, what I’m reading, confession, whatever. This series will be appropriately called First Draft. J

What about you?

Do you read blogs or has your blog reading slowed down? Are you a writer and have you stopped posting on your site? What would you enjoy seeing me write about? If you had a blog, what would you write about?

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