11 reasons why I don’t write any more

1. It’s too easy to post that interesting article to Facebook or Twitter and not say much about it.
2. I wasted the last hour reading updates on Facebook.
3. I don’t want to break other people’s news. The ideas that really fascinate me are the ones other people tell me about … and they haven’t written about them yet. They never seem to get around to writing about them and I don’t feel like it’s my role to break their news.
4. I don’t know where to post it. Should my funny dog post be two sentences on Facebook or a post on my personal blog or should I create a dog blog or should I guest post on a dog website?
5. I don’t want to deal with the flame war. A lot of really fascinating ideas have become really hot topics lately and nobody seems to be able to debate them even semi-objectively.
6. I don’t want to deal with hate mail. The last time I posted what I thought was a personal post about how I deal with life as a woman at conferences, women from around the world came out of the woodwork to tell me I was stupid and wrong and harming women.
7. Too personal. I used to feel like I was sharing my blog with a group of friends and friends of friends. Now it feels like I’m sharing it with the world. Forever.
8. Too invasive. I have lots of stories that I now write down but can not share because it wouldn’t be appropriate to share that about people. I don’t remember having this problem so I don’t know if I used to write about people confident in the fact they wouldn’t read it or if I just wasn’t as tempted by the stories of other people. This is particularly true for me for stories about other parents.
9. Too much social media. It feels like we spend so much time sharing the moment on social media, with people that aren’t here, and then checking to see how many people liked it, that we forget to live in the moment. The answer to this would be less social media, not less writing, but what happens is that I write less.
10. No RSS reader. It feels like Facebook has replaced RSS readers, so I no longer feel like I have a following on my blog. Blogs are more dependent on SEO and social media than they are on a following which really changed the audience and the conversation.
11. Higher standards. Blog posts used to be something people wrote daily. They often were not polished. Now blog posts are expected to be well polished, often with professional editors and multiple levels of review.
12. No pictures. Where’s my picture to go with this post? Should it be a selfie of me not writing? Or a stock image photo? Can you publish an article without an image any more? Medium says you should add a high resolution picture to capture people’s interest.

Why aren’t you writing more?