I really don’t want to make a big deal of this, but here’s the new blog.
FAQ:
1. Er…why?
Because as much as I really and truly do like the Way of the Old Blog, with news links, discussions and lots of links for blegs and such, I need to stop doing that.
2. But, why?
Because it takes a lot of time and energy that you just can’t see. There’s this cumulative expectation, built up over the years, that my blog had to be a certain kind of comprehensive Catholic blog, etc., etc. It’s something I envisioned myself at the very beginning, but then gradually tried to back off from, and actually grew to try to cast off –  over the years – really from about 2004. Careful readers will see that over the past year I have really been trying to move away from that: posting less frequently, opening comments less, etc.
I wrote three books this year, so obviously I can work and blog at the same time, but I also know that that type of blogging (which feeds my curious, newsgathering personality) takes a lot away from the quality of writing. Yes, The Agent loved the YA novel and is trying to sell it, and yes, the editors at OSV and WAU press like what I wrote for them, but I just really know, in my own soul, that I can do better. That I can dig deeper – but I can’t do it while responding to the volume of email that I get, searching for links to balance out a particular story, feeling guilty about not linking, because I just don’t have time to be constantly searching them out,  to all the great Catholic blogs that are out there that you really should be visiting, and so on. I want to do good, and I want to do lasting good – the kind of good that people carry around, share, put on their bookshelves and reflect on – rather than the kind of good that sparks a momentary flash until we surf to the next website and the next and the next.  I like it all, but the energy I put into this is just too much, considering what I want to try to accomplish elsewhere.
A CLEAN BREAK was called for.
3. So why not just stop blogging all together? Ego, much?
No, not really. I like to write. I like to create stuff. Except for my family and the check-out people at Meier’s, I live a fairly solitary existence. At this point, it’s a way for me to connect. I am grateful for readers, and you are a fundamental part of the pleasure of blogging, but numbers are not my issue, at all.
So here it is. I am still figuring out WordPress. Oh, that leads to:
4. Why WordPress? Why not just redo the old blog at the same address?
Because it’s part of that clean break, completely new blog, completely new sensibility on my part. I can’t even think of a title for this blog, so it’s untitled. I was going to call it “Charlotte Was Both,” and I still might. Or not. There is much I like about Typepad, and a few things so far I find quite counterintuitive about WordPress, but I like the templates here better – they are easier to play with in the ways I want to play with them – the banner up there, for example, is super-simple to change off, which I will do frequently.
So we’ll see…