Why blog? And what contests have to do with it.

I’ve seen a few bloggers lately wonder why they’re blogging, what they have to add to the blogosphere that is worth saying. Everyone’s voice is unique, and while they aren’t all to my taste, that doesn’t mean their words are unworthy.

I was on Blogger for over four years, and had a private blog site before that. I read back some of my early posts In My Little World today, which caused me to remember I once blogged a lot more and was more entertaining. And probably had a bigger following. 😛

One of the reasons I don’t blog as much, I think, is this whole Genesis contest thing. This is the third year I’ve entered, and the judges aren’t supposed to know who the writers are that they’re judging. Yet I hang out with a number of them and who knows, some of them might even come here from time to time. After all, I’m a Genesis judge myself–there are dozens and dozens of us, and we don’t know who we all are. We don’t know who all entered the contest, but we can figure out some if we poke around enough. I don’t want to be blatant.

I used to talk openly about my wip titles, my characters’ names, the research I was doing, plots and subplots and themes. And now I’m not so open (though anyone can click on *For Readers* up above and get the lowdown on my various works-in-progress). I don’t want to stick that info in the face of potential judges or fellow contest enterers (new word, like it?).

The other thing is that I’ve separated out some of my interests and given them their own blogs, such as most of the farm and garden and food stuff being posted at Scratch.

And I guess being on FaceBook and Twitter has affected how I blog, too. Where I might once have written short blog posts on some of the things I now update in those places, now I often just post there.

Curious–anyone else find that FaceBook and Twitter have negatively affected their blogging? Or positively? How have you handled the multiple online reporting options?