Good blogging
I've been blogging for about three and a half years. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still at it. After all, I'm a personal blogger. I'm not commenting on the great issues of the day, and my contributions to the overall dialogue are pretty trivial. I'm rarely funny, so I'm not making people laugh. My blog, in the harshest light, is self-indulgence, but it's at least relatively harmless. My time management takes the hardest hit.
I know why I keep on writing. I've chosen to do it in a public forum because I'm a feedback junkie. Though I've been making greater efforts at getting some of my other creative writing professionally published, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. I write because I enjoy it. I wrote without readers for years, but I like writing even better when people read it, even when it's some of the crap I post here.
I also keep reading blogs. Despite frequent editing, my Bloglines list just keeps growing and growing. Some days, it almost feels like a chore to check all the updated entries. Then there are days like this, when I read and find myself so moved that I know completely without a doubt why I love blogging.
The Closeted Pastor is one of the newer blogs to me, and one I've come to love. My wish for its author is a world in which her closet wouldn't be necessary because we could all see the love of God in and for everybody as they are. Her latest entry on some Mother's Day thoughts brought up all sorts of wonderful memories for me. She inspires and challenges me regularly.
Don't Eat Alone is another recent find for me. What can you say about an intelligent, caring, spiritual Christian man who can cook? Another one of my kindred in the battle against depression, his blog is absolutely addictive. He always gets me thinking, and his honesty and refusal to back down from difficult topics makes me want to do more of the same.
Jon is an intermittent blogger. I know of two blogs he's started and then discarded. I kept his last blog on my Bloglines subscription list for months after he'd left it because he's a wonderful writer worth revisiting. Today, through a link in another blog, I found the infamous faux cowboy of AOL journals was at it again with Lone Star Concerto. This man's words can take you places, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing that he's been blogging for months now without me knowing about it. Just when I think that blogsurfing for new reads is a waste of time...
Just as there is always something new out there, my old regulars always have something that keep me coming back for more. Isn't it amazing how you come to genuinely care for someone just through their words and pictures? So it is with Gannet Girl of Search The Sea. Her entry on cold feet really hit home with me.
People are such wonderful creatures, and reading blogs has let me see some of the best in us all.
blogs
posted by Cynthia at
5:07 PM
3 Comments:
"I wrote without readers for years, but I like writing even better when people read it, even when it's some of the crap I post here."
I'm not sure where this comment is going. We'll see.
Before I started my blog, all of my writing was read, since most of what I do for a living is writing or talking, after having read and thought.
Your thought about the "crap" you post kind of makes me think.
I post a lot of crap. But, at the time I hit publish, for the most part I like it. There's little, were I to go back and think about it that I would delete.
That said, you've made me think that maybe I'm not discriminating enough. People pay me to read and think, then talk or write. They don't pay me to be elegant with the talking and writing, unless it just happens or it's really, really important.
I'm thinking that I'm taking too much of that attitude to the blog. I get an idea and develop it as I write. I seldom save it as a draft and come back and polish it. In fact, I never do that.
Don't know. Maybe the blog deserves less with more quality.
Dave, One of the things I like about writing a blog is letting my ideas develop as I write them. I never know where I'll end up when I start writing a blog entry, and that's part of the fun. I enjoy that in the blogs I read as well, though not all of them are like that. I admire polished, well conceived and carefully developed writing, but I also think this medium is a great place for more impromptu writing. Looking back at my blog, I do think a lot of it is crap, but it's still crap I like or it wouldn't be here. I rarely post anything here that isn't essentially a first draft. Sometimes I can polish so much I lose what was good and right about my writing in the first place. Maybe it's all in the balance.
I agree w/ you. No matter how often I update my links, I end up with about the same number.
The one thing is that there are some of my favorite blogs, who haven't posted in months, almost a year in some cases and I can't bear to delete them from my blogroll just yet. You know, folks like Omz, Maryanne, etc.
Oh well, I'll still have you:)
Have a Great weekend!
Chris
My Blog
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home