Sunday, June 29, 2008

Writer? Blogger? Both?


I have a "favorites" list that includes a pretty diverse group of blogs that I try to get to at least a couple of times a week.

The subject matter on these is fun, serious, artful and personal. Some of them make me laugh, some make me cry, some make be cheer and occasionally one will make me angry, but they are all interesting.

Over at Travelin Oma's Library and marta writes (a delightful mother/daughter pair of blogs if ever I saw one!) there has been some thought provoking discussion about why folks blog.

There were a couple of things they said that really got me to thinking about my blogs.

1. In Marta's post she says: "my main blogging goal is to write it out, find my voice, being true to myself, to whatever is whirling in my mind and just write. yet, i also want to make you love me."

2. Oma has this to say: "I blog the way I used to write in my journal. ... I kept my journal, imagining the people who would someday read it. It wasn't ever meant to be totally private. I'm an audience kind of writer. For me, writing doesn't feel complete unless someone reads it."

To each of them I want to say a loud, resounding YES!

I actually write several blogs, and each of them has its own purpose. The first one I started was because I wanted to keep in touch with people that had purchased a piece of my artwork, and to let them know what I was working on next.

This blog has always been intended to be a much more personal one, but like Oma, my writing doesn't feel complete unless someone reads it.

Maybe its the little kid in me that ALWAYS wants your attention, I get so excited when I get a comment on anything I've written.

This is the place that the whining and ranting goes on. It is the place that I feel safe in saying things that are difficult for me to say to myself and I am always touched and humbled when someone out there in the big wide world "hears" it and reaches back to touch my hand and my heart.

Oma asks in her post if we journal too -- I don't.

My blogging is my journal.

I have a friend in California that fills several 2 inch binder notebooks every year (I always see to it that she has the first one to start in as a Christmas gift). She carefully writes about what she has done and where she has been, she keeps letters and cards and children's art work. She is building a treasure for her children and her grandchildren in the future -- I hope they will appreciate it.

So, I don't hand write -- I blog and I put in lots of pictures -- and I have folders where I have printed out each entry.

And then there is the question of "is this writing"? It's sort of like asking "is it art"? Could we say that writing, like art, is in the eye of the beholder? Is what we write in our blogs more or less likely to be "writing"? Is it only writing if it gets published?

I don't know.

I only know that most days I feel better for the experience. And better still if someone reads it and comments -- yes, its the exhibitionist side of me -- because someone has "heard" what I had to say

If we didn't want someone to read it, we wouldn't put it out on the web

if there is no one to hear it, does the falling tree make a sound? yes, but no one cares

we blog because we want to be heard

1 comment:

Travelin'Oma said...

I'm so glad I inspired your great post. I like the word exhibitionist...I am one, I guess. You've expressed some good thoughts here. I didn't think I could ever think without a pen in my hand. Now I have to type it. It comes out so much faster and smoother. That's one reason I can't write in a journal anymore. Longhand just takes too long!