The best blogs, it seems to me, know when enough is enough. We’ve been writing this particular blog for a couple of years now, and the original aim of it was to chart our progress as we moved from a croft on the mainland to a croft in the wilds of the Outer Hebrides. In that sense, it was intended predominantly for family and friends (most of whom at the time thought we were crazy to move).
I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of blog-as-personal-diary, and this one has often run the risk of becoming that. Neither am I ever very impressed by blogs that try to be too many things all at the same time, and this one still runs the risk of becoming that.
It’s also hard sometimes to keep two overlapping blogs going, and our Earthlines magazine blog (http://earthlinesmagazine.wordpress.com) now contains writing that we would otherwise probably post here (especially our new ‘Uig journal’ series).
So, with that as background, we intend to mothball the ‘House of the Ravens’ blog. Please do join us on the EarthLines blog, where you’ll also find guest posts.
I’ve also begun a new blog to re-focus on my mythtelling and storytelling work, which once upon a time was my day job but which has been in remission for the past six years while we’ve been working flat out on Two Ravens Press. The birth of EarthLines seems like a good reason to pick up on all that again. The new blog is called Re-enchanting the Earth: myth, story and the natural world.
Sharon
A pity. Anyone is qualified to write about life in general, but only you can write about the life of Sharon Blackie; and when your blogs were of the nature of a personal journal, it was very compelling. A lone candle guttering in the wind on a black night makes for a much better story than yet another street light. But I’m looking forward to my copy of the first issue of Earth Lines, so if you must re-focus on that, then ‘au revoir; Sharon.
Thank you, Jonathan. But I really didn’t intend it to be the story of my life, which is why I have been growing uncomfortable. In the sense that it was never intended to be about me or us, but about certain ways of being and thinking which derive from the way we live. Maybe I’m the only one who worries about the difference! Sometimes the purely diary-esque personal can get in the way of the bigger picture. But I very much intend to continue many of the kind of posts you’ve enjoyed on the EarthLines blog, and David too, as well as on my new ‘oral traditions’ blog. It’s just that trying to do it in both places was getting a bit wearing. We’re getting older and easily confused :-)