You don’t need to blog.

You just don’t.

If you are an aspiring writer, and you want to blog, go ahead and blog. But you don’t need to.

You can stop reading right here if you like because everything from now on is just a more thorough dissection on that statement.

Still there? Cool.

I’ve posted about this topic several times before, but every so often, it’s nice to have a reminder. Buckle up. This might be rough.

Nobody cares about your random thoughts on stuff. You are probably not that interesting. And even if you are, there is probably somebody more interesting and popular around the corner that people would rather pay attention to. The internet is not waiting to hear from you, and even if you do manage to create amazing content it’ll most likely get swallowed up and forgotten by the maelstrom that is internet culture.

And that’s okay.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t blog or be on social media. A lot of people do it just to keep in touch with friends and family, and that’s not a bad reason. But if you feel that it will make or break your career, you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. You’re also likely discouraging yourself from doing what you want to do to actually advance your goals.

Unless your goal is to blog, in which case, good job.

Now I’m a mildly successful writer. I manage to make a living at this, and so far, no one’s kicked me out of the secret writer clubhouse in the Amazon forest where James Patterson throws balled up papers with ideas at the plebes and J.K. Rowling sometimes shares her notes on which Harry Potter characters are secretly robots. (HINT: All of them.) I’ve got a movie going on in China and some other stuff in the fire. I’ve been published in multiple languages. I’ve had my own San Diego Comic-Con Panel, won an Alex Award, the Amelia Bloomer Award for Outstanding Feminist Fiction, and I once almost talked to George Lopez on the phone!

I have 2,000 Twitter followers.

Nobody cares, and that’s okay. I want people to like my books, not me. In my ideal world, nobody would know anything about me. The other day, I caught a tweet where someone thought I was a woman, and I felt no compulsion to correct them. I was just happy they liked the book.

This blog, which you are now reading, gets maybe 100 visits a day on a good day. It doesn’t seem to matter if I update it regularly or not. The content I create (including a ton of free short stories that are sitting right there for anyone to read) doesn’t get people excited often. And it’s just the way it is.

So blog. Or don’t. But don’t worry about your social media platform like it means anything.

Also, if an agent or editor doesn’t want you unless you’ve got an established social media platform, they are probably not the agent editor for you. Just saying.

Now, there are always exceptions. And you might be one of those exceptions.

But you aren’t.

I’m not telling anyone they shouldn’t engage in social media. Rather, I’d say that if you have a choice between social media and doing something actually productive, you should probably do the productive thing. And if, by some chance, doing social media is your way of being productive, go for it. I find that I do write more when I post regularly. The mere act of writing something, of formulating thoughts in cogent ways, gets my juices flowing. It’s weird, but it seems to be true.

So find what works for you, but if you find that social media is distracting you, get rid of it. It won’t hurt your career. I promise.

Now go on and do something worth doing.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE