I’m embarrassed to say how long I have been sitting here, trying to come up with a good idea for this blog. Maybe this is shameful because I know it’s going to be read by teachers, who are not people who like to hear you are unprepared. There’s also the fact that I am a “professional writer,” so this shouldn’t be like pulling teeth. (I use quotes because I still can’t quite wrap my mind around that, for some reason. When asked what I do, it is still always my first instinct to say, “Waitress,” even though it’s been over ten years since I last served a dish of salsa to a customer. Why is that?)

It’s not like I’m an inexperienced blogger. I’ve had my own, which I update about three times weekly, for almost ten years now. I started it when not that many people were blogging, stuck with it when everyone was, and now find myself in dwindling numbers as the world has moved on to the more concise forms of tweets and status updates.

So few folks are still blogging regularly, in fact, that I’ve given a lot of thought lately to quitting it altogether. I have a lot of followers on Twitter and Facebook, and there is an admitted ease in just having to do little bits, a sentence here, a sentence there, rather than paragraphs of entire cohesive thought. And no one has long attention spans anymore, anyway, if you believe the media. (The same media also recently reported that parents aren’t reading their kids picture books anymore. But if the bookcase I just tried to organize in my daughter’s playroom—stuffed to bursting with Knuffle Bunny, Llama Llama and others—is any indication, this isn’t necessarily true either.)

To be honest, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my blog. I like having something so immediate I can put out there, without waiting the two years or so that it takes me to get a book fully ready for release. Once I began working full-time as an author, leaving my teaching job at UNC-Chapel Hill, the blog also became my water cooler, a place where I could always find someone up for discussing American Idol and my obsession with coffee and chocolate.

At the same time, though, it requires discipline and a certain amount of creative energy, two things that are often in short supply when I’m deep into working on a book. It’s hard enough to keep a novel going during that dreaded stretch (for me, anyway) after the fun burst of the beginning and before the rush towards the end without trying to come up with something else to say every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

And yet, I do. Why? Well, I actually think it’s good for my writing. If novels are marathons, blogging is a quick mile, just to keep my legs strong and get some air in my lungs. When I feel the same dread sitting here, staring at a blank blog page that I do a half-finished chapter, there is nothing better I can do for myself than push forward right into that hollow, anxiety-filled place and just start writing something. Anything. It’s a leap of faith I can never take enough, because no matter how often I land on my feet, I’m convinced it won’t happen the next time I’m poised on the cliff.

And you know what’s the weirdest thing? When I do just start, and trust it will somehow come and make sense, it does. The entries are not always perfect or even good, but neither is every word of every draft.

With tweeting and Facebook, I can take two minutes and tinker to come up with something (hopefully) witty and worth reading. But a blog entry requires more patience. It forces me to do one thing I am not good at except when I am writing, which is slowing down. (There is nothing slower than being at about page 250 of a novel you are already sick of, knowing you have another 100 pages to go. Nothing.)

The truth is, we live in a world that is moving faster and faster every day. In response, our lives are abbreviated, as are our conversations and our reflections. Writing is one thing that forces me to be still and take my time. Reading is another. And judging by the uproar in the comments section of my blog whenever I’ve mentioned giving it up, I’m not alone.

And see, this blog itself is perfect proof of my point. I was sitting here, chewing on a thumbnail, wracking my brain for something to write, and now it’s finished. One mile down, 25 or more so to go. But that’s okay. What matters is that there is still room, out there in this swirling media universe, for something that takes more than 140 characters to say.

I just can’t promise that mine won’t have to do with television or chocolate. Sorry about that. 

Sarah Dessen grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing. She is the author of several novels, including Someone Like You, Just Listen, and Along for the Ride. A motion picture based on her first two books, How to Deal, was released in 2003. Sarah's tenth novel, What Happened to Goodbye, hit bookstores yesterday.



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