The Blogging Thing Continued

The Blogging Thing Part 8 :Bud Parr of Chekhov's Mistress

I should start with a couple of confessions. First I am not a writer by profession or training. I am a writer, I like to think, by temperament and mentality. I love the way writing makes me think and they way it makes me see the world with the eye of a photographer, except only that my images are the first sentences to unwritten stories.

Writing also feeds my duplicitous ego, which simultaneously tells me that I’m brilliant and that I know nothing worth saying. That is my second confession and that is where blogging comes in.

"Myself’s my self’s main interest…" as Siegfried Sassoon wrote, "so I find/ Not one dull page in all these reams of writing." It is very satisfying to instantly publish your thoughts for anyone to see. It is even more exciting to have others connect with what you’ve written. Through the linkages that form the core of the blogging community, feedback on what you write happens very quickly.

It is precisely those incestuous (as they’ve been called) linkages that make blogging what it is - a conversation between disparate, yet like-minded individuals, all sharing their passion for books. While blogging has a conversation’s spontaneity, it also has a disciplining mechanism that the permanence of writing forces upon you. In that regard, blogging has been a revelation to me in terms of thinking more critically about literature - a form of education in that it's constantly challenging to be relevant and thoughtful.

Beyond these qualities, the most gratifying outcome of my on-line presence has been the people I’ve encountered. I started my first blog, Bookenomics & Policulture in 2003, where I wrote about all of my interests, but I found no community. When I decided to focus on literature, I came upon this group of personalities - the "lit-bloggers." They’re an opinionated bunch and each brings his or her own views and experience to the table in a way that I find uniquely compelling. I read lit-blogs before I read the paper every day.

As an adjunct to my primary site, Chekhov’s Mistress I’ve recently started 400 Windmills, which is devoted to being the center of a discussion on Don Quixote. We have nine authors from seven cities in three countries. Most have their own blogs, but they contribute to our group site with great energy. We are just getting started, but have had hundreds of visits per day, and I keep getting emails from readers who love the book and are just thrilled to see this interactive commentary going on. I think the project will not only enhance my reading of a great classic, but it’s really fun in its own right to bring these people together.

Lastly, I believe that blogging fulfills the promise of the "World WideWeb" in a very profound and egalitarian manner. It’s clear that the phenomenon is changing the way journalists operate and the way friends share information. And also the way that companies communicate. What better way to understand this amazing transformation than to take part in it.

Although blogging has opened my world in ways that I would not have expected, it can be quite time consuming. But every time I threaten to quit, I just keep writing.

Blogger Shelley Divnich Haggert on Mover Shaker Birthday Cake Baker

My shelves are filled with childhood journals and diaries that, when opened, reveal mostly empty pages. Oh, I tried – I’d pick up my pencil and try to scribble out a story, or share the events of my day, or translate my feelings about something into written words. Like most future writers, I was compelled to record things, real and imagined. But I never got very far.

Yet somehow, I’ve kept a blog going, more or less daily, for more than two years. Blogging gives me the one thing that was missing during those years of trying to pen epistles and epiphanies – it gives me the one thing I need to keep churning out the paragraphs filled with thoughts and opinions and experiences.

It gives me an audience.

I’ve never been one of those writers who writes "just for me." Words that will have no reader are, for me, wasted words. It would be akin to standing in an empty room and talking to myself. And although my blog entries are often mundane recollections of things that might not matter to the reader, there’s still a reader. And usually, they tell me they think I'm funny. Instant ego boost!

My blog eventually morphed into an extension of my self-published book "Generation Xhausted." Whether visitors found the blog through the book, or vice versa, the commenting and linking features have enabled me to connect with my readers in a more immediate way than earlier generations of writers.

My blog entries have often evolved into full-fledged essays that I’ve been able to sell elsewhere. It is both a "mommy blog" and a "writer blog" – a recording of happenings, insights and opinions that allow my readers to see that there is a real person, with a real life behind the name on the book cover.