This is going to be a quickie.
Intrigued by the term BLOG, I checked it out abit the other day and see that it derives from the word WEBLOG. Okay- so now I have it but it doesn’t help to alleviate the fact that I am a bothered blogger. I am trying to understand the relevance or value of this blogging business -though clearly I do understand the value for some, and yes, maybe even for me since it is getting people reading my stuff- and yet, I am battling to reconcile this whole business of writing …or perhaps just blogging with my ultimate quest, which is to complete my NEXT book. Since the release of my book, it appears that I have now ALSO had to become a blogger (along with FB or Twitter-incidentally I read somewhere that Lauren Beukes committed FB suicide long ago- wise move, I say, though she can well-afford this luxury ) but this is definitely something I didn’t plan on and it’s taking me even further away from what I really want to write about. For me the word “writer” carries a whimsical, romantic, floating kind of feeling. You know what I mean? When someone says , “I am a writer” my association is instinctively of someone who has a sense of awareness and profound powers of thought and observation; one who is perceptive and creative and is capable of sharing insights discoverable only in secret chambers of their own mind which they dare to communicate by scribbling words on a page.
Some writers also become mad and impoverished though. That’s a real bummer.
But bloggers? What of bloggers. ” I am a blogger”, it is written and I immediately think Detective Whatshisname from the Thin Blue Line…you know, the moustached klutz whose spewed speech is littered with bubbling rhyme when he describes a supposed villain as an(example)..” argy- bargy, hoity toity, get -what-you deserve, fat- assed bleeding, bloody, sniveling snot-faced cretin” that he has (incorrectly) arrested and brought down at Gosforth station for Rowan Atkinson to gloat. Blogger just seems too close to bogger. Or just bog. And that’s not a really romantic word is it? It’s toilet- let’s face it. I’m on the bog or I’m going to bog you out. I mean, you don’t want to think of that do you?
But so it is…I am now also a fully-fledged blogger ( and I realize that there’s a whole industry of bloggers and I really do love reading (relevant and beautiful) blogs, so please don’t get me wrong here ) but if it’s all the same to you, dear bloggee (can I call you this, the recipient of a blog, in preference to merely being a boring old reader? ) I will just omit the word blogger from my list of potential titles on twitter or elsewhere and rather just say…I have a blog.
I am a writer. It somehow just sounds nicer to me.
Niki Malherbe 
Niki, I read this with interest, as I. am in the process of reflecting on my own blog. While I do think that to the uninitiated, writing does seem whimsical, but as someone who researches and writes for a living, and has a blog, I have a somewhat different perspective. I do enjoy writing: the research, the thinking, and then the process involved in saying what needs to be said. Writing is a slog. Wirter’s block is real.
On the other hand, my evolving blog is a little like a log, so the root of the word if interesting and resonates for me. Although, like you, I don’t like the word, “blog”, I am beginning to embrace the term, partly because it seems a bit pretentious telling people about “my” website which is full of (mostly) my whim, unlike the writing I do to earn a living.
So having started off saying that writing is not whimsical, it seems that my “unprofessional” writing is… All the best for your next book!
Hullo Fiona! Thanks for taking time out to respond to my thoughts on blogging and your points are valid indeed. Writing and blogging seem thus merely derivatives of the same task…getting words on paper/screen! Thanks for your encouragement and all the best to you too!.x