Letter 43: October 27, 2008
Let's go all the way back to letter 7, because I feel like talking, again, about blogging as a tool that helps you write.
Blogging is a performance art: it is neither writing not printing. Typically the audience is small. By small I mean it's almost imaginary. But that can change in an instant: one casual mention by a more popular blogger can introduce hundreds of readers.
Two differences from traditional performance art are that new readers can explore your previous performances, and that you have the power to revise and improve them. (Wouldn't you love to have the freedom Shakespeare had to improve his published work with every edition, a freedom that writers today don't expect?)
The changed expectation may have been caused by the technological shift from hand-set letterpress to lithography, but in the digital age re-setting has become easy again. What keeps the expectation alive is the general assumption that a play or novel, once published, is no longer something the author is working on. No wonder writers hesitate to commit their thoughts to paper.
The blogger can type freely for her public, knowing that she can correct inaccuracies and infelicities at any future time. The perception of an audience of regular readers - however hypothetical they are - lends a helpful urgency. At the same time, most bloggers seem to feel they have permission to take breaks or write off their usual topics: there is a sense of control of one's work.
Popular blogs attract many comments from readers. This immediate feedback is published and can become a discussion with and among the readers. Does that make your blog a collaboration? I wonder. It depends.
The typical blog, then, stands somewhere between a scratchpad and a published work, and maybe it's both. It benefits the writer in various ways including that it reduces the risk of loneliness, it invites regular work and it tolerates short, long, discursive and other unconventional postings.
But above all, I think, it gives you the unchallengeable awareness of being a working and a published writer. Should that certainty ever begin to fade you can get it back in five easy minutes.
Something you can try today because you didn't try this when I said it in February, did you, and that's why it didn't work for you: (1) spend thirty minutes registering to be a blog owner at blogger.com or anywhere else you know about, and (2) when you do today’s writing, put it there – you can either compose it there, or compose it the usual way and copy it into your web page, it doesn’t matter - (3) email me with questions, problems and comments.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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