Blogging is good for the writing, and yet that's somehow not obvious

The more I blog, the more I work on my other wrtiting, and vice versa. So I dunno, maybe it's just that the urge is the same. But I feel like when I do a little blogging it's a good warmup to work on the fiction, even the fiction that might seem tough that day. 

But there's something missing from the blogging urge. It's not stable, not reliable. I'll get inspired for a month or so to blog all the time, and then that will fade when I realize I'm not seeing a lot of readers. And yet that's not rational -- I get a lot out of the blog, even if it's only friends reading it -- every comment matters, the ongoing conversation is helpful and fun. 

And why should the blog draw me less than the fiction, when much of the fiction has yet to be read by anyone at all? 

Meh, even if it just means I don't have to email my kids' photos all over creation, it's doing the world a service. 

I keep coming back to the fact that even if there aren't many readers, the act of trying to write in the blog makes my thoughts more coherant than they are in my journal. And I tend to jot things down in my journal and write more lengthy blog posts later, sometimes much later, and I think that process is a great one.