Blogs vs Novels

Allow me to state the obvious – blogs and novels are different.  I know…shocking!

Although one must be at least a decent writer to do one or the other well, each type of writing requires different skills.  When I write a blog post, it’s a stream of consciousness.  Yes, I have a topic I’m looking to write about, but I don’t plan it out all that much, and I certainly don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on it.  Instead, I use the topic as a guide and write whatever happens to come into my tiny little brain regarding it.  Occasionally something will spin off like a stray electron spinning off into space.  Lots of times, the final product may not even look anything like what I originally thought I was going to write about.  Beyond that, there are extraneous words, especially in the use of adjectives and adverbs that I’d shy away from in writing a novel, mostly because, while I check to make sure everything is spelled properly and makes a modicum of sense, I don’t spend the time editing and shaping a blog post the way I do a novel.

Novels, on the other hand, are deliberate and planned out.  I craft an outline and know basically where it’s headed.  In my outline, I may have very specific action sequences or bits of dialogue I’m looking to use for the effect they create.  After writing a novel, instead of publishing it right away, I’ll put it aside for a bit so I can look at it with fresh eyes, and I do that so I can better edit it and remove those words that don’t directly contribute to the story. 

Of course, novel writing and blogging are different animals, even though both involve writing.  I liken it to playing speed chess versus regular match play.  I was reminded of this while watching The Queen’s Gambit recently, although I should’ve thought of it on my own since I spent a lot of time in my teenage years at chess tournaments and hanging out in chess clubs(yup, I was cool…and still am).  Speed chess is like blogging in that it’s a quick stream of consciousness.  You don’t have time to think through a great deal of strategy, so you just react.  In match play, you plan out your attack in greater detail, and you might spend five minutes(the usual allotted time for your side in a speed chess match) or more on a single move.

So why am I rambling on about this?  Because I don’t want folks to think that the skills are the same, or that every good blogger is capable of being a good novelist(or vice versa).  I think I can both write a good novel and good blog post, but I have to shift mindsets between the two, and any writer worth his or her salt has to do the same.