I’ve decided that either I have to start writing posts more often than once a week or give up blogging altogether. Once a week doesn’t leave me enough room for trivia. I keep thinking that if I only do one post a week, I must write something profound, or at least serious or full of angst.
I’m not up to the challenge.
So I’m relaxing the schedule. I’m making good progress on the second edition of The Big Bang to Now, so I’m calling this new schedule a reward for work well done so far.
Do you think this is an admission of failure? Personally, I think it’s a pretty good rationalization. Freud would approve.
The Other I 
Oh good!
You’ll feel better for it.
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Comment by sanstorm — February 6, 2012 @ 4:10 pm |
Thank you. I have been watching your own blog-vs-other writing tussle with interest, as it has roughly paralleled my own. I’m also looking forward to your comparison of a blog and a diary. Terry
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Comment by Terry Sissons — February 6, 2012 @ 4:46 pm |
I completely applaud the relaxed schedule, if that means more frequency, or more trivia, or just more freedom to do whatever the hell you want, when you want.
That’s the beauty of the blogging world, and you might as well claim it.
I’ve also been thinking (this is a complete sidebar) that the chronological blog format imposes a limiting mindset–there’s a prejudice innate to the system in favor of “fresh” material (for example, as in WordPress’ Freshly Pressed status thing). But interesting posts persist over time, and that’s the beating heart of this world that often goes unnoticed. Tags and various sidebar options can help with access to whatever readers really want/need to see (whether it’s profound or trivial), but I think we should also free ourselves from the constraints of the need to be fresh. Ecclesiastes, and all. What’s really fresh, in a meaningful way, is an individual’s unique, authentic, perspective and story.
The other organizing system in the blogging world that gets second shrift from the chronological mindset is its connectivity as regards kindred spirits. I don’t care how often my favorite writers post; I just know I love to hear from them.
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Comment by Barbara Sullivan — February 6, 2012 @ 7:19 pm |
Thank you for the encouragement.
While we’re on the sidebar, the limiting mindset I find most inhibiting for productive blogging, if not actually destructive, is the popularity contest. Are blogs better if they hit the big time? if they attract the attention of a publisher and turn the author into a celebrity? Do more hits really mean high quality?
I have to remind myself constantly not to let what probably began as a child as a desire to be liked get in the way of what I write. I greatly appreciate having people read my blog. I wouldn’t write it at all if they didn’t. I value the feedback. But I’m not in the entertainment industry. I’m entering into a dialogue, and the whole process becomes undermined if I don’t stay rooted in myself and concentrate instead on what I imagine the reader wants to read about.
Obviously, this principle doesn’t apply to all blogs. Some blogs whose main aim is to communicate information or to analyze current affairs, for instance, are legitimately judged at least in part by how many people read them.
Thank you again. Terry
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Comment by Terry Sissons — February 7, 2012 @ 2:45 pm |
More hits usually means more visibility, which is not necessarily related to quality any more than the ubiquitous presence of McDonald’s is related to good nutrition. I also think that the root-vegetable, sustainable organic gardeners of the blogging world (let’s face it) have a more limited potential audience than those serving up Happy Meals. Not that I’m too refined for fast food, or CSI reruns, or Bruce Willis action movies, or entertaining blogs—I love and indulge in all of them, but I don’t want to hold myself to the same high standard of success as measured by popularity (to which standard I say, “Yippee ki-yay!”). 🙂
At the same time, I admit that when more people are reading and/or responding to my blog, it does motivate me to invest in it. Not just because I was (and still am, inside) a child wanting to be liked–and accepted, and validated, and recognized, and most of all wanted–but because these days I need to invest my time and energy where it will do the most good, according to my own definition. At sixty-five, I am exquisitely aware of the limitation of time, and of how slippery a character it is. I don’t want to waste it–which is another reason to blaze my own trail, even though I don’t know where it’s going, and even though no one may take the journey with me. What I do know is that I spent WAY too much of my previous life blazing the trails that other people wanted me to clear for them.
I love your idea of entering into a dialogue. A big yes to that! That possibility is inherent in this medium–whereas it’s not in conventional publishing–and those who value such an exchange can use it, even if others see the “comments” function as primarily a way to increase traffic. I think there is a lot of important stuff going on under the covers in this blogging world; I also think that over time, a powerful root system of connections can be built with a worldwide reach–connections of a kind that formerly were limited (to a group of friends/family/colleagues) by time and space, but that can now circumvent both. Those of us who care about change more than entertainment finally have a way to meet and support each other.
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Comment by Barbara Sullivan — February 8, 2012 @ 2:01 am |
Yes, I also find that readers give my blogging motivation a huge boost. And it’s not all for lofty reasons. I like to be liked, I like to be a success, or that people find what I have to say entertaining or insightful.
But I too have gained extremely valuable insights and support from people whom I know only on the internet. As you rightly point out, traditional publishing doesn’t afford this kind of dialogue.
I think the value of internet-only relationships comes in part from the fact that they are by nature restricted. We experience so much less of the whole person than we do in face-to-face day-to-day relationships. That means I can benefit from something someone says without being distracted by short-comings that might be more self-evident or distracting in person. Of course, that means I also dismiss others based on a single contribution as well.
All in all, I think it is valuable to realize that in-person in-the-room relationships have different strengths and weaknesses, and make different contributions than internet-only friendships.
I mean, I suspect it would be a disastrous mistake to marry someone based only on internet exchanges, even if they have gone on for years. I could be as shocked to discover that the person I envisioned as a potential husband was only 18 years old, as he would be to discover that I’m 71. Or that I already have a husband, of course, with whom I am happily living.
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Comment by Terry Sissons — February 9, 2012 @ 8:26 pm