To Blog or Not to Blog by Nancy Churnin

​To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

For many of us, our time to write is so limited or constricted, it seems crazy to take on one more writing obligation. And yet, in addition to the Nonfiction Ninjas blog, where I share a nugget of hard-earned writerly wisdom once every three months, I started a blog, THE KIDS ARE ALL WRITE, on my website nancychurnin.com.

And I made it weekly.

My motivation at the start was to give back to the writing community. When my books came out, writers, educators, book-loving folks with blogs hosted me – reviewing my books or doing interviews that gave me an opportunity to talk about my writing journey – what inspires me, what challenges me, what my hopes for my books are.

This would be my chance to do the same for other writers.

That’s a good enough reason to host a blog. But in doing it, I found an unexpected reward. I got to ask other writers all the things I wanted to know about what inspired them, what challenged them, what their hopes for their books are.

We talk about craft, about what we include and leave out of the narrative, about the surprises and the discoveries. In short, not only have I made marvelous friends through these interviews, they’ve become weekly dives into craft and motivation sessions that remind me why I love living in a world of words.

So yes, since time is finite, the hours I spend on the blog take away the time I have to write and promote my books. But there are wrinkles in time and tesseracts and the time I spend shining a light on others and learning from them deepens my work, makes it better and makes me better.
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So, do you have the time to start a blog? Maybe the better question is whether you can come up with a better way of learning, growing and giving back.