Most people will tell you that a blog is meant to offer something of value to readers, the idea being to satisfy, and grow, one’s following. Many blogs read like a recount (‘What I’ve been up to…’), usually underpinned by a healthy dose of self-promotion, admittedly a necessity in today’s industry. I’m not really interested in these things. So why the hell am I blogging?

When I was in my final year at Duke University, I pushed a pram from Durham, North Carolina to Washington, DC as part of a relay team to raise funds for long-shot US Presidential candidate, John B Anderson. The year was 1980 and Anderson was running against the incumbent, Georgia peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter and Hollywood movie star and former California governor, Ronald Reagan – a race that, after 2016, no longer sounds absurd.

Over the past few years I’ve logged about thirty reviews for CBCA’s Reading Time. I take the role of reviewer seriously – maybe too seriously 😉 – and always aim to be thorough and fair. This means identifying a book’s weaknesses in addition to its strengths. Readers have told me they appreciate my candour, but I sometimes worry that I’m a lone (grumpy) voice in review-land.

If I ever write a memoir, I’d probably title it Survivor. When it comes to my, ahem, eventful life, Grateful Dead sums it up best: What a long, strange trip it’s been. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t written one. I’m not sure I’m ready to hop back on the trauma train. But I’ve been ‘dabbling’, a somewhat cavalier reference for mining my memory banks, occasionally jotting down snippets. And I’ve been thinking – lots of thinking – trying to connect the dots. That was B.C. – Before COVID-19.

Writing for me has always been confessional. So, perhaps it’s only fitting that I confess: I don’t particularly like blogging. It has always struck me as being somewhat self-indulgent. (Let me share my musings … as if they are universal truths.) Plus, ‘blog’ sounds uncannily like the sound one makes when vomiting. And I can’t help but think that’s a metaphor of sorts.

I’m still prone to procrastinating. Like now – blogging when I should be writing … or at least editing. That’s because I’m a moody writer – always have been, always will be. For me, words splatter onto the page with sweat, tears and occasionally a bit of blood. Deadlines and word counts are necessary evils, ones that occasionally mess with my muse. Yet despite this intuitive approach, I still manage to churn out an enormous amount of work, perhaps because something deeper, darker, is driving my output.