Are You a Blogger or a Writer?

Bloggers and writers are creatively similar but their habits differ considerably.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

If you’re trying to be a blogger, then be a blogger. If you’re trying to be a writer, then be a writer. I think it’s useful to sort the two and decide what you’re trying to be.

The hill of wildflowers vs. a carefully planned garden

Think of a hill of wildflowers vs. a carefully planned garden. Among those wildflowers may be patches of utter beauty. There are flowers here and there that shine among the neighbors, but overall, there is a wildness to it all. That’s the blogging world.

The carefully planned garden allows each variety to shine within its neighborhood, placed in just the right light next to plants of a supporting role. That’s the writing world, with its careful displays in bookshop windows.

Now take a carefully planned garden that looks like a hill of wildflowers — that can be the highest form of written expression, a work of genius, the illusion of wildness but with a supreme deftness of control.

Or that same garden that looks like a hill of wildflowers could be a failed work, something that overshot its mark and just doesn’t work. Such is the subjective nature of judging art. One…