creative writing - Pros and Cons: A blog to get feedback

As a creative writer in my free time, I sometime suffer from a lack of feedback. To get some impressions on what I've written, I either have to ask my girlfriend (who acts as a sort of beta-reader) or some friend.

Now, my girlfriend doesn't seem to mind, but getting feedbacks from my friends is kind of difficult. I usually get no answer back - meaning that either my writings aren't interesting enough to be read, or they have better things to do. Either way, it has little sense to me to bother them further with this topic. If they don't read willingly, they won't give me honest feedback either, and I'll get "yea it was nice" answers at best.

So I was thinking of opening a blog where to publish my short stories, or some of the chapter of my longest novel (which still is far from completed).

I've seen it done a couple of times, mostly by a local author in my country (she managed to publish on Amazon some of the stories who passed through the blog, also). She has a nice community of readers around her blog.

I'd like to build something similar, but I understand it may be a waste of time - worse, free time I could have used to write instead. My other main worrying is that I'm after some cheap, ego-fulfilling way to pass the time, instead of doing something useful.

Note that I'm not searching for beta readers specifically, I'd just like to share my work with someone else. Writing makes less sense if my stuff mostly lays in a pc folder.

What's your take on the matter? What are the up and downsides of opening such a blog. in terms of time consumption and/or motivational gain.

Answer

Pro's:

• It gives you feedback. Any feedback can help you to improve your work, if you are able to filter it properly.


• It gives you exposure and generates hype for your work. It allows you to build an audience even before your work is finished.


• It prevents you from procrastinating. If you don't write anything for weeks, there will be a public record of your laziness. This can be a great motivator to force yourself to write regularly (or at least post an excuse why you didn't publish any new material this week).

Con's:

• Posting too much might affect your ability to monetize your work. Why would I buy your book when I can read most of it on your blog for free? So think carefully what you publish as free samples on your blog and what you keep behind a paywall.


• Feedback can be misleading. People might complain about things which only bother them, but are irrelevant or even positive for most of your primary target demographic. Trying to appeal to everyone will result in a work which appeals to no one.


• Feedback can be demoralizing. There will be people who just bash your work without offering anything useful. The best you can do about that is ignore it and move on. The worst you can do is to feed the trolls and start a discussion with them which takes up time and energy you could spend on improving your work or interact with those people who deserve it. But taking the bait is a temptation which is hard to resist.


• In the worst case, you might not get any feedback at all. You spend a lot of time on setting up your blog and then get no attention at all except from the occasional spam bot. To get people to read your blog, they need to know it exists. That means you need to spend resources to advertise it. Advertise it too obnoxiously, and you will turn people against you. Getting too obsessed with the success of your blog might blind you from what purpose it is actually supposed to fulfill.