How Do You Manage Blogging?

It has been no secret that my winter and spring were eaten up like popcorn at a thriller movie this year from various interruptions. Some of it, of course, was my own poor management of time I am sure. But creativity and becoming lost in words does take time. Then there are blogs…like those famous potato chips, you can’t read just one!

I try to limit myself, but there are so many good blogs and newsletters out there that I can become derailed with some mighty good thoughts and opinions of others for a long while. Lately Becky over at Writer Searching for Bliss (http://beckypovich.blogspot.com) got so distracted by blog reading and writing she had to take a Blog Break! To quote Becky a bit, blogging “sure eats up a lot of time”.

I meant to limit by list of blogs that I would follow regularly, but mercy, that too has grown like Topsy. It is a job to read and comment on them all. I keep running onto more and more that are worthwhile. Some blogs are for pleasure and some for work. Several writing blogs challenge me to produce. I suppose one could do blogs like magazine subscriptions. Try it for a while and then drop it later, but too often I find the bloggers are such interesting people, that they become personal friends and who wants to drop their friends?

Today I signed up to follow a blog called The Dictionary Project. The idea of words, authors, books…ah, sounds good to me! You might want to check it out for yourself at http://thedictionaryprojectblog.com.

A recent blog I have been trying to tap into...and one I am way behind in reading….is Tend Your Inner Garden over at http://tendingyourinnergarden.com.This is a site for women searching to tap into their own inner guidance relying on the seasons as teachers...among many other topics.  Today I got the newsletter in my email and listen to what Deb Engle had to say:

"By cutting away what was no longer them, I revealed the beauty at their core. This is the process we do for ourselves when we tend our inner gardens and take time for spiritual practice. We consistently, little by little, let go of what is no longer us so we can reveal the beauty within."

Now the author was talking about looking for beauty in our own lives by showing how she trimmed her plants, but I saw this as writing advice as well. Don’t we often need to prune those wordy passages down and let go of things we “think” are vital only to see our writing become stronger and more lively?

This also reminds me of blogging again. How do you decide how much to blog, either reading or writing? Do you set limits for reading? Do you set goals for writing? Do you prune your blog list? How do YOU manage blogging, an informative and supportive activity for writers?