Sorry About the Blog

My email inbox often contains messages with tips about successful blogging. I wish I had time to read all of them. Those I do read, consistently note the importance of consistency in posting. Apparently, I have a failure of a blog. No matter how hard I try, I can’t be consistent.

I’m afraid I’m stretched far too thin and simply don’t have time to keep up the posting. It’s not like when I was a weekly newspaper columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area and someone actually paid me to express my feelings on any number of subjects.

I wonder, do newspaper columnists still exist or has everyone turned to blogging?

Anyway, as a sometimes blogger and an active novelist who is just beginning to see the light at the end of the manuscript, I’m living in another world while I work. If I worked in a vacuum tube the new novel would have been completed by my first self-imposed deadline; however, I work in a home. It’s an active home filled with kids, laundry, dirty dishes, a chihuahua who prefers to poop inside on chilly winter days, occasional houseguests, a calendar filled with car pools, soccer games and volleyball tournaments, and a business telephone line that won’t stop ringing. Unfortunately, most of the calls are from solicitors wanting me to buy something rather than customers who want to buy something from me.

Does ANYONE know how to get these people to stop calling? Every DO NOT CALL list or method of getting the computers to throw out my number has failed. I really don’t want to be rude when there’s an actual human on the other end of the phone who’s just trying to do his job, but damn it! I’m just trying to do my job too.

Because of distractions and time limitations, blogging has had to take a backseat to my real jobs. Blogging for me, and most likely for many writers, is like exercise or training. And I think it’s easy to neglect exercise when our lives become too hectic. (I haven’t been on the Elliptical since Monday!) Writing a novel, on the other hand, is more like running a marathon. Let me put it this way: when I run an eight-minute mile I feel really good about myself; however, if I manage to write eight pages in a day, I’m ecstatic. Some days, I settle for a single page and remind myself how difficult it can be.

Now, given I’ve already responded to 23 emails this morning, taken three calls and responded to two voicemails, AND I’ve managed to whine my way through another blog, it’s time to go back to my Irish Twins. I’m really dying to find out what the younger one is going to do next.