For those of us who devote a lot of time to writing of various sorts, blogs can present a bit of a conundrum. Is blogging a good warm-up for fiction writing, or a distraction from it? How much time should one spend blogging? How polished should a blog be? How spontaneous?

I've always tried to err on the side of spontaneity. Which is to say, short blogs quickly written.

As a reader I happen to prefer to read blogs which are short, "unprocessed" (if that's the right word) and spur of the moment. I can read carefully constructed writing in books and stories. Blogs, to me are more like conversation. Good conversation. Conversation to which a bit of thought has been devoted. But no more than that.

However, this approach is also self-serving because as a writer facing the limited time we all have to deal with these days, I find spontaneous blogging to be a necessity. I really cannot justify spending more than 15 or 20 minutes on writing a blog, although, sometimes notes accrete over a period of days into an entry which, in the end, has consumed longer.

But wait. Is such an attitude insulting to those who take the time to read my blog?

This is the conundrum -- although I wouldn't blog if I felt I had to polish my writing as if it were intended for publication, blogs are, in fact, presented for public consumption. It's easy to forget that and having forgotten, to receive the occassional jarring reminder.

At which point it is probably a good idea to reconsider the wisdom of dashing stuff off and then diplaying it in full pubic view.