Oh, The Irony

See! I swore that I would be a responsible poster and post on Thursday, but I did not. I've never been very good at schedules.

Here's the thing. I've always wanted to be a novelist, but I treated that dream like one of the whac-a-moles at a kid's pizza place. Every time it popped its head up, I'd say, "No! Stupid dream!" And I'd smash it down hard with a padded club.

I still had a writing jones, though, so I started a frugal living blog several years ago. I got responses and praise and a little money right away instead of scribbling in broke, unresponsive silence for eight years, which was the fate I knew awaited all fools who tried to write novels. That was sort of nice, but after a few years, I realized I didn't love it anymore. I wanted to be writing stories, not articles on the seven steps to maximize credit card offers. Plus, I was using WordPress (such a big mistake), and I couldn't keep up with all the updates and widgets and gadgets and twidgets and links and finks and tweaks. I wasted so much time trying to learn Wordpress. I still cringe when I think of it. And there was the networking. The linking and blog circling and the daily submissions and guest posting and the affiliate coordinating and blah blah blah blah blah! I realized that I kind of hated blogging.

So after I confided some of my blogging frustrations to hubs, he said, "Stop blogging and do what you want to do! Try to write a novel!" (He was actually telling me to quit blogging and start noveling from the beginning.) It took several years, but I finally agreed with him.

So, I put blogging behind me and started attending conferences and listening to "Writing Excuses" and "The Appendix" and Farland's Author's Advisory. And you wanna know the first thing those meanies told me? (Stop laughing! Stop it right now!) Those mean published, professional writers all agreed that if I wanted to be a successful novelist . . . I was going to need a blog.

Oh, the irony.