I get continual messages from people who want to ‘help’ me get more ‘traffic’ on this website, want to show me how to run my ‘business’ properly, how to be a ‘success’ and any number of similar ideas. Being popular is one… how could anyone not want to be popular? I can see how some of these ways of thinking and parting with money would be useful to business people, but I get the feeling that almost nobody understands how a writer might be thinking. Of course you could be a writer who wants only to be successful in the conventional meaning…. in other words the quality of what you write means nothing, but the number of people who read it means everything. I’m amongst the writers who think the other way around… that the quality of the thought, the expression, the writing itself and the tone and feeling of the whole book mean infinitely more than the numbers of people who read it. I’m never going to change. Well, the thing about blogging is that it is a form of writing, but more like a diary than a real piece of writing, and so, as a writer, I am cautious about how much of my writing time is taken up doing this activity. And I’m always self-conscious doing it too, because I haven’t a clue who is reading this, or who cares. So it feels like an act of vanity and time wasting, wanky stuff, if you see what I mean? The only time I ever clean my windows is in spring when the sun first shines through, and I certainly don’t let it take up too much of my time. So, while I appreciate that there are some folk who want to sell their wares and need to know how to get ‘traffic,’ I don’t actually care very much at all.
