Former Observer music editor Sarah Hepola has decided that the blog is the great blob that writing blots ambition even as it spawns prose bloat. So she turned hers off. Or will. Eventually.
"Blogging had been the ideal run-up to a novel, but it had also become a major distraction. I would sit down to start on my novel only to come up with five different blog entries.I suspect I'll come back to blogging eventually. It will be something I quit on occasion, like whiskey and melted cheese, when the negative effects outweigh the benefits. Practically every blogger I know has taken their site down at some point—for personal reasons, for business reasons, for boredom reasons. It's no different from the way we have to turn off our cell phones or stop checking e-mail so that we can actually focus on something. As much as I loved writing online, it's a relief writing offline: taking time to let a story unspool, to massage a sentence over an afternoon's walk, to stew for days—weeks, even—on a plot line. What a modern luxury. Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started."
Wow. Whiskey and melted cheese. Gotta try that. But how do keep the cheese melted with the rocks floating around in there? --Mark Stuertz
