This is a guest post by CalebJ Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. He will be guest-posting beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, pleasecontacthim. To be a groupie and follow this tour,subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

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There is a quiet debate taking place regarding the validity of blogging as an honest and measurable (as in word count) form of writing. The debate is so quiet, in fact, that I just made it up for the sake of this post. Can fiction writers count blogs as butt-in-seat time? Does blogging offer any benefit to the novelist? I ask this question here because, as you likely know, Mr. Jacques has established quite a history of churning out fiction as blog posts. A history I envy. But what if the post isn’t story? What if the post is standard blog rambling, like this one seems to be?

On the sentence level, sure, blogging helps the fiction writer. On the narrative level, probably not.

Okay, I admit, I’m reaching for support here. Over the past few months the only writing I’ve done is for this blog tour. For someone who has written at least one sentence of fiction, building toward a novel or story, almost every day for the last 10 years, blogging feels like a cop-out. But should it feel that way?

I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s true: promotion takes just as much time as, if not more time than, actually writing. When I set out to organize this blog tour, I assumed a few hours each week would be plenty to allow for the emails, the phone calls, the quick mention here and there, all the tedious stuff necessary to make sure people are aware of my book. A few hours each day is more appropriate.

Anyone have any ideas to help me change my perspective?

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© Caleb J Ross MMXI