Pen Hanley's Blog

Solving problems and uplifting the heart – Mary Quant and Sand Talk

Slow blogging and fast tango

Have I put new meaning into the concept of Slow Blogging? It’s been quite a gap. In it I finished another novel and settled into a new house in a new town – a small town bristling with fascinating, friendly people and plenty of things to do (between bouts of Covid lockdowns). I can even dance tango, to some extent. (Between lockdowns and no partner-swapping, given that it’s palm pressed to palm and us breathing in each other’s faces.)

Haven’t written a blog for so long because they take a day or two to write, days in which I could finish or rewrite a chapter of my new novel, A Late Flowering, or read a whole book. And so many wonderful books to read! Most blogs are brief and not the book reviews mine essentially are, which I used to write for The Canberra Times and a few journals. Over the years I’d written about 100. Remember what George Orwell said about it? ‘Book reviewing is like pouring your immortal soul down the drain, one pint at a time.’

But writing them taught me much about the writing of books and gave me a chance to air my preoccupations publicly and engage in a dialogue with readers, which I enjoyed. And I was paid plus got to keep the books, which isn’t necessarily the case with blogging. The truth is, much motivation for taking this up again is so I can tell potential publishers I have one – they take a dim view of writers with not enough online presence. And the publisher’s publicist won’t read this – she’ll just want to know that I’ve got one. So there you are, dear reader, I’ve let you in on a secret but I do still appreciate you. I know how many other claims there are on your time.

Tim Ferriss (another tango dancer)

Should I take a leaf out of the blog format of Tim Ferriss, that entertaining young lad I’ve done blogs on before? (Interesting how some whizz kids retain that early prodigy ‘flavour’ into middle age!) He fills in a sentence or two under these headings:

‘What I’m Reading