Well, it seems that I'm still not sure what to do about SoFo. My gut feeling, now, is to throw everything I've got into finishing my book. I don't know how long it's going to take to do this, but SoFo is likely to be a major distraction. I've considered a sort of SoFo-lite, and just doing book reviews for a while. Nothing personal, nothing demented, and definitely no short pieces about any aspect of my life. (All that stuff, potentially, is for the book.)

For someone like me, a blog is an avenue into journalism. It's an avenue that I have mixed feelings about. It's also possible that it's an avenue that I can entirely avoid. Every journalist I've ever known and just about every journalist I've ever heard of (with very few exceptions) got into that field as a way into writing books. Thirty years later, they're still journalists, but they've mysteriously become jaded and cynical. And, somehow, incapable of writing a book.

I generalise, of course. I like to fantasise that this is somehow useful.

Journalism, especially personal journalism, seems to suck up one's entire lifetime of experience and spit it out the other end in short, easily digestible segments. It's something I can do, but it's something I no longer want to do, except in song. Even if I can't clearly explain why, I want my book to tell a longer story, of one part of my life. And, along the way, to use the image of man-falls-over-twig-and-lands-in-swamp as a way into talking about the world in which we live.

I may well be wrong, but what I'm thinking now is: this is the best use of my talents. If I put SoFo aside for a while, it's because I'm aiming higher.