Writing to be read?

I’m a social networking virgin but recently I’ve been receiving so many invitations to join Linkedin that I thought I ought to do something about it.

    ‘What is it?’ I asked Gill (www.motecobnutsproject.blogspot.co.uk). ‘What happens?’

    ‘It’s Facebook for grownups,’ she said.

    I was none the wiser.

    ‘I’m e-publishing one of my novels in the autumn,’ she said, ‘and I joined Linkedin to build up my network of contacts.’

    Now she was talking.

    I love blogging. I love the fact that I’m not being paid for it. I love the fact that I don’t even have to worry about publication, that I don’t have a goal in mind when I blog. I do it because it seems to be unblocking a vast reservoir of ideas and opinions. It’s enabling me to speak up for perhaps the first time in my life.

    And for all those reasons I try not to get too hung up on how many ‘followers’ I have or how many comments I get on the posts. It just makes me miserable if I do. I know that a handful of people (well, three) read my blogs in detail and seem to understand what I’m getting at and that another dozen or so dip in and out.

    However, each time I do get a new follower or receive a comment it puts me on a high for hours if not days. What if I were to network and really go public? Isn’t that what it’s all about?

    Well I tried.

    But, quite honestly, I couldn’t be bothered. It struck me as just another way to waste time, to put off actually doing any writing. I didn’t think any of the people on the site would be interested in reading my blogs and I didn’t like giving out personal information.

    I’m not a public person, that’s why I write. And if I do ever get published again in the ‘real’ world, my publisher can blinking well do the marketing themselves.

    Even so, I wouldn’t mind some more blog-readers.

    Or would I? |Perhaps it would take away my freedom.