I want you to know that even when I’m not actually blogging, I am thinking about blogging quite a lot.  Sure, mostly I’m thinking: “oh blorgh, I have to blog,” or “dagnabit, I forgot to do my blog again,” or “OK I really have to blog tonight so MY MOM WILL STOP CALLING ME ABOUT IT.”  But at least it’s on my mind, right?  🙂

I also read a lot of other people’s blogs, and blogs about blogs or social media, and it’s all a little daunting.  Half the online opinion seems to be: Yes!  You MUST have an online presence!  You must blog and Facebook and Tweet and careen around the Internet tubes so people know you are out there or else no one will ever read your books!  And the other half is: Eh, do it if you want to, but it doesn’t make much difference.  It’s more important to write good books instead.

Doesn’t make much DIFFERENCE?  I’ve been blogging for nearly five years – I really hope all these baby photos and book recommendations and vitally important musings about TV are making a difference somehow!  ;-)  But on the other hand, several of my favorite authors do very little jumping about the Internets and no blogging at all that I can see (Kate Atkinson, Suzanne Collins, Megan Whalen Turner, for instance), and I’ll still read every single one of their books.  So if I stopped blogging, would anyone besides my mother miss it?

Well (don’t panic, editors!), I’m not currently planning to stop blogging – certainly not before my shiny new series launch next year!  :-)  But I would love to figure out how to make this blog more awesome/helpful/interesting to whoever is out there.  I’ve been thinking about shorter, more frequent blogs on specific topics (see below).  I’ve also been thinking about dragging my sister, who is World Class Awesome and an Honest To Goodness Real Professional Editor herself, into blogging conversations about publishing with me.  Or I could turn this blog entirely over to baby photos (awwwwwww!), but that’ll only work until the kid is old enough to be like “OMG MOOOOM EMBAAAAAARRRASSING!” *door slam*, which apparently could be, like, next month, if the most gloomy parenting books are to be believed.  (Oh, you know I don’t actually read the gloomy parenting books.)