Back to Blogging!

Update! HIATUS LIFTED! In case you didn't know :) Glad to be back, with house-buying craziness  behind me and the rough draft of my novel finished, woot woot!! Below is my original blog post, in case you missed it. xo Di

I was once a lurker. In the truest sense of the word. I wrote Sinister and Wishmaker in the space of one year. During that time I tootled around on Querytracker. I followed blogs and read forums but NEVER commented. Ever. Well, except on one message board but it was completely not writer related and ANYWAY, that's not the point. The point is, at the end of last summer, while I was still querying Sinister-- and around when I finished writing Wishmaker-- I decided to start a blog. It was a good time for it, because I wasn't focusing on my writing, I was focused on querying.

But now I AM focused on a new book. Not querying or revising it, but writing it. And writing a book changes things for a writer. For me, it changes everything.

It seems that every writer works differently. I become engrossed. I want to spend every free second I have in my story, with my characters, and free time is hard enough to find without being an active blogger. Now that I've gotten to the point in the wip where I'm all heated to work on it, honestly, if I could lock myself in a room somewhere and write from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, I'd do it. 

So where does that leave my blog?

It leaves my blog... not as loved as it used to be. I'm SO HAPPY I started blogging; I've found I'm much more social than I thought I could be, and I've made so many friends. True, treasured friends. However... househunting and kids aside, I've been so engrossed in my wip that I have COMPLETELY gone back to my lurking ways! I never comment on your blogs anymore, and it seems anti-bloggish to just keep posting and posting without commenting on everyone's awesome posts; their thoughts and hopes and worries and dreams. 

The problem is, if I write for an hour a day (let's say) and spend more time blogging or catching up on comments than I do writing, the progress is made in my blog and not in my story. The story is where I want to be, you see. The stories are what I hope to build on.

That's why I'm turning off the blog. For now.

I hope you all still say "hi" on Twitter, or send me an email now and then. I'm not going anywhere, really. I'm just switching into deep-lurk mode, at least until my story is where I want it to be. I lurked on a lot of blogs and forums before I started blogging, and I doubt that will ever change.

To avoid the Coaster looking like a sad, abandoned ghost-blog, I will be switching it to private. If you like the links or want access for whatever reason, email me and I'll give you the password. I'm only doing the private-thing so when OTHER people wander over here by accident, they don't see the blog. I'd rather that than have people find some dusty, month-old post staring back at them. And also, I like having all the blogs I'll be lurking at right here in one easy place for me to find them, so I do still want the page to exist.

I want to mention, I'm taking the advice of a few bloggy agents I've read recently, and making my actual web page more the focal point. Up until now, my actual web page has been little more than a placeholder. Eventually, I hope it will be where agents find me, should they take any interest in my project and decide to click the link I send when I query. 

To sum up, starting on Monday, the Coaster will be closed off. Since so many of you are on Twitter, I'm sure you won't miss me too much :) Check my website to see what I'm up to, and definitely email me! My (still in progress) site is dianapaz.com and when I start the query process again, I might just come out of lurk mode and be the social butterfly I never expected!

Take care all! And very happy writing :)