Great post! I’m relieved to hear that I’m the only person who has written 15 pages of a novel only to find myself surfing the web instead of writing page 16. I would like to chime in on your question about the possible impact of blogging on the next generation of writers. Speaking only for myself, it is because of blogging that I am even considering attempting to write a novel or a few short stories. Before blogging I had no idea that I could write anything that other people might possibly enjoy reading, but my blog has helped me to gain some confidence and improve as a writer.

I’m using our wireless router, which has access restriction options. If you use a wireless router, tell me the make and model, and I can look it up for you and see if it has a similar functionality.

If you don’t use a router that has a this feature, there is another option. There is a free web filtering software package called K9 that is available from k9webprotection.com. It allows you to restrict internet access to certain times of the day, and requires you to enter a password to get around the restrictions. So you’d need to have someone else make up the password if you wanted to use this for yourself.

How exciting that we’re all on the same page, Angela!

I think it’s too soon to say what blogging is or is not. Early novels were a little awkward and stilted and great art took a few decades to really arrive. I’m sure the same thing will happen here. If blogging survives. I worry about this Twitter phenomenon. Dear me, will we soon be reduced to keeping greatness to 140 characters or less?

I totally agree. But I don’t know that necessarily needs to be the case. I have written a (few) posts that have gone through multiple revisions and required as much discipline to write as anything else I’ve written (granted, I have yet to tackle the long form of a novel). Patricia at AMV routinely revises her posts. And there have been some blog posts over the years that have been as good as any personal essay that has appeared in Dialogue, Sunstone, Irreantum or other Mormon journals — or even national ones.

That said, I think the blog format has its strengths and weaknesses (as you’ve already pointed out). Which is why a model like Segullah’s is excellent, imo. You are basically a community of readers, writers and editors that expresses itself in multiple ways/forms. It’s a model that I personally think the AML should employ (but I’ve already said that in another arena).

I don’t necessarily believe novel writing should be privileged over blogging, but I DO think that novel writing, as well as other forms like poetry and the personal essay, requires more discipline (at least it does for me) and that discipline comes in the form of revision. Almost everything I write for blogs (mine, or Segullah’s, or comments on other blogs) represent fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants writing and a similar style of thinking. I very rarely revise anything blog related, and if I do, it’s to change a word or mark of punctuation here or there. There’s none of the wholesale “throw it all out and start again” that is the hallmark of other forms of creative writing I’ve engaged in.

I wouldn’t call anything I’ve done as a blogger “art.” And before folks get all crazy on me, I’m not saying blogging isn’t art or never will be art. I’m sure there are bloggers out there who put as much care into crafting or revising a blog post as I would into a short story. When *I* blog, though, I’m not in art-making mode. I’m in conversation mode, and those are two very different gears for me. I totally Theric’s Onan, seed-spilling metaphor (as graphic as it may be) because blogging can be like that sometimes. FOR ME. Again, not for everybody. But for me.

Yes, food for thought . . .

Part of the reason I blog is that because of professional and family responsibilities, I find that I just don’t have the energy for more difficult writing. So, yeah, a post on what to do when your lives are filled with everyday life would be great.

On the other hand, the Atlantic article that was linked to is pure bunk. Or to put it more nicely: the claims the author makes aren’t backed up by his evidence. It’s the kind of faux-trend story that journalists are so fond of writing (with that take-down-the-beloved-icon headline — the only thing that was missing was a pun in the headline or subhead). I’d be very interested in what neuroscientists and neuro- and socio-linguists have to say on the subject of the Internet and attention span. But I don’t buy the whole “pancake thinking” argument. I also think that some of his evidences seriously misinterprets things like what Internet traffic patterns show and how people use the Web effectively.

I also have to wonder why novels should be privileged over blogging (or even over other forms of storytelling). There is, after all, a commercial aspect to why the novel became the dominant form of fiction (although it has now been replaced by the film). Of course, I love novels and have the exact same bias, but I have begun to interrogate that a bit. Perhaps community building is more important than creating long-form fiction? I don’t know. And this is not to really disagree with any of the comments — they all ring much too true to my own experience and attitudes.

Angela– in response to your question, I always aspired to be a writer, but lacked both the discipline to work hard on something and thick skin to allow it to be rejected. So I just didn’t try. I taught other people how to write and helped them develop thick skins instead. For me, blogging has been a bridge. It has the instant gratification that writing for conventional publication doesn’t, and for every negative comment, I probably get ten or fifteen positive comments (well, not so much when I post at fMh, lol). Anyway, both of those factors have made me feel self-confident enough to make the move into “real” writing, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.

But really, I have no self-discipline. I blog at three different places, and spend way too much time at two online communities. I probably invest almost as much time in online stuff as I did at work when I had a full-time job (ok, I’m exaggerating, but not by much).