And, of course you’re right. I suppose it’s like anything else. There will be pros and cons for any individual based on their particular circumstances–just as there are many routes to writing at a professional level, so long as writing is actually accomplished!

(“He wrote vaguely, bloggily…”? Nope, not quite an adverb yet.)

A blog is a newer form of written communication. It allows some two way exchange. For me, perhaps it’s values are speed and ease of use. Oh, and it can reach a wider audience more quickly than my paper planes.

But it’s just a form. If it encourages a writer to develop talent, that seems to be good.

I think that it’s useful to blog even before you’ve been published professionally. I’d already published my first novel before I started my blogs, but I found it was useful to practice and find my voice in postings before my dragon novels were published. When they came out, I’d been blogging for a couple of years and when new readers googled me, they found my blog and contacted me through it.

I really don’t see any downsides to blogging. 1. It’s free. 2. It can build useful writing habits. 3. Even if you only have a few dozen fans who bother to contact you, why not make it easy for them to find you and read about your work/life/philosophy.

The arguments against it seem to boil down to:
1. It’s a waste of time. You can spend ten hours a week blogging that you should spend writing fiction. My argument against this argument is adults are free to manage their time as they wish. You can spend 10 hours blogging and 10 hours on fiction and who’s to stop you? It doesn’t automatically lead to less time writing fiction.

2. No one is going to read you. This is sort of a shrug argument for me. As a fiction writer, you may as well get used to chasing small audiences. A lot of anthologies you’ll appear in are going to have readerships of fewer than a thousand readers. Some of the “big” magazines have readerships of under 8k. In my early years, I published in small press zines that probably had fewer than 100 readers. Is it a waste to publish a story in these small markets? I don’t submit to them any more myself, but, really, I don’t think that any writing is wasted writing.

However, your other stats are still interesting, as I hadn’t realized that even making two to three thousand (my record month this August was just over three thousand, six hundred) each month was as good as that. I also don’t do any of the stuff you listed, though it wouldn’t be as important to do it given my traffic is nowhere near last night’s ‘amplified’ numbers.

I have been surprised that searching for Suanne Warr doesn’t pull my site up all that quickly–maybe ’cause it’s not in my blogs or tags? I really should learn more about all the stuff one does to manage and maximize a site. I like the look and layout of your new site–very cool and professional.

I guess the most fundamental reason I blog is that I like it. I believe my other points are valid, and stand by them, but if I didn’t like it or if it encroached on my writing time, than it probably wouldn’t be worth it.

Those are good reasons, especially number four! And succinctly put–unlike my essay. Or was it a lecture? At any rate, I’m glad the blogger thing is working for you, too.

A lot of what you’re mentioning in this post (contact information, etc) could be accomplished with a static web page, and not with a blog per se. I’m a firm believer that authors should have a web presence, but a blog fill with their daily activities? How does that help?

As an aside, holy cow that’s a lot of traffic. EDF and Clarkesworld both only get 10-12K uniques a month. Are you sure about those numbers? I mean, I think John Scalzi only get 50-100K a month, and he’s like the tenth most read blog on the internet.

As a web designer, I have to say, that if you are getting that much traffic, there’s something wrong with the design or coding of your website. Your site only has a PageRank of 1 out of 10, and http://www.compete.com shows you as having no traffic. You should be getting at least 10-20 comments on each post. I mean, the site doesn’t even show up first on Google for a search of Suanne Warr, which it should. In fact, on a search of “tales from the raven suanne warr” at Google, your comment at Without Really Trying shows up higher than the site, and that just isn’t right.

By contrast, Without Really Trying gets only 900 uniques a month (granted it was a dead blog until recently), but it shows up right at the top of a search for “Jordan Lapp”. This is how your site should show.

Are you using Google Analytics, or some other software? In my opinion, it would certainly be worth a couple of hundred bucks to get a web designer to look at your site and optimize it a little to try and leverage that amount of traffic.

I blog because:

1. It’s fun to challenge myself to come up with something clever to say in a clever way. Keeps the axe sharp, so to speak.

2. I like to see ‘behind the scenes’ stuff with the people who’s creative work I enjoy. Just thought I should return the favor.

3. It provides a communication medium that may one day become a platform. At the same time, it will show that I didn’t just drop out of the sky with a new book.

4. Man can only play so much Civilization IV.