Over here, Jaquandor (BTW, is that pronounced Jock-on-dor or Jak-wan-dor?) discusses whether blogging is bad for writers. It seems a correspondent had suggested that blogging is simply another form of procrastination, and of no benefit to a professional writer.

It seems to me that there are two aspects to this question: first, is
blogging beneficial to one’s writing? And second, is blogging beneficial
to one’s career? Certainly, while one is blogging one is not trying to
find an agent, sending out manuscripts, or writing salable prose. I can
see that for some writers, blogging might be a dangerous distraction.

But, not being a professional writer, I’m more interested in the first
aspect–how does blogging affect my writing skills? And I think the
answer is simple: if the three most important words in Real Estate are
“Location, location, location,” then the three most important words in
writing are “practice, practice, practice”. If you wish to write clearly
and well, you can never get too much practice in putting your thoughts
and visions into words. And if you approach blogging with that in mind,
then it is excellent practice. The daily format is especially helpful at
turning writing from being something you do every now and then, when
especially inspired, into something you can do whenever you like.

The horror of every student is the five or ten or twenty-page
paper. I still remember my surprise when, some five years or so into my
career as a software engineer, I realized that I was often writing
documents of much greater length than that. That was my first
lesson–writing is much easier if you have something to say. And the
great advantage of doing technical writing is that it emphasizes clarity
and directness, two qualities I find valuable in any kind of writing.

I’m a history buff; I once brought home a copy of the celebrated Hobbes
translation of Thucydides. I soon discovered that Hobbes’ translation is
celebrated because of Hobbes’ Herculean command of English prose style, a
style fraught with sentences containing seemingly dozens of
clauses–Herculean, because only a Superman can do the necessary heavy
lifting. It’s the sort of writing where you need to read each sentence three times to
be sure you understand it; and it takes you twenty minutes because the
sentences are so long. It might, perhaps, be an accurate reflection of
the original Greek; but it’s no kind of way to read Thucydides, and to
date I haven’t done so.

But I digress.

A little over seven years ago, I started writing and publishing
book reviews on the web. I started out updating the website daily (it
was nearly a proto-blog in that regard) but after a few months gravitated
to a monthly format. At the end of each month I’d sit down with the
stack of books I’d read during the month, and spend several hours
reviewing each one. I don’t claim that every review was a miracle of
clarity and style, but over time it, along with my technical writing,
taught me to write on demand. Writer’s block be damned!

In fact, I think writer’s block is widely misunderstood. A few years
ago, when I began to write more seriously, I read quite a few books on
the subject. There’s a certain category of book–I’m thinking of
Writing Down The Bones and So You Want To Write that treats
writing as a semi-mystical activity. These books emphasize something
they call “writing practice”, which amounts to written free-association.
The goal is to stifle one’s “inner editor,” that little voice that says,
“This is garbage!” and to write down the contents of one’s heart before
it can be censored or edited.

I tried doing this kind of writing practice, and I did not find it
particularly helpful. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed
to accomplish–unless it is simply intended to help those who have never
written to get words down on paper, so that they see that they can. For
my part, I cherish my inner editor. For me, it’s that little voice that
says, “That sentence is too long. Delete those three words and that
comma, and it’ll say the same thing.”

Or perhaps it’s a way for people to practice writing when they don’t have
anything in particular to say. And that, I think is the key to writer’s
block, and the prime difference between writing fiction and non-fiction.
For non-fiction, such as a book review or a technical document, the
material is before you. You must put it in some kind of order, and
present it clearly, but the content already exists. Your concern as a
writer is not what to say, but how to say it, and in what order.

When writing fiction, however, the material must be made up. Figuring
out what happens next is hard; writing it down is relatively
easy–provided you’re used to expressing your ideas and visions in words.

And that’s where blogging helps. It’s practice at the craft of writing,
at training the words to be your servants rather than your master. And
then, when the muse strikes and you’re ready to perpetrate some
literature, your servants stand ready.