Oh, my dear young writer, didn't anyone tell you that Live Journal is actually where the Living Dead of the writing world are created?
-- Robin Hobb


Damn.

Read the whole article for a sophisticated analysis of the modern phenomenon known as 'blogging':

The Internet is full of fools and foolishness, and has provided a forum for people to ramble and rant publicly about things of which they know nothing, or just enough to be both completely wrong and thoroughly self-righteous (a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing). But this is hardly a new phenomenon, nor is complaining about it. In his recent and excellently synoptic Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, intellectual historian Peter Gay includes this passage: “In 1891, Henry James lamented the overflow of literary chatter fueled by writers utterly unqualified to pronounce on such sacred subjects as contemporary fiction or poetry, music, or painting. The very multiplication of printed opinion in the Victorian age was, he wrote, summoning up his most resonant organ tones, a ‘catastrophe,’ amounting to ‘the failure of distinction, the failure of style, the failure of knowledge, the failure of thought.’” As Gay writes, “This was a little too grim-faced” (92). Plus ça change...
-- Reginald Shepherd, ' All Kinds of Favors Fall From It: Some Thoughts on Becoming a Blogger', Critical Mass

The paradox of Gilliard’s existence is a familiar story on the blogs, where people often adapt avatars that are more like the selves they imagine being. Online, he was vicious and uncompromising. In person, Gilly, as his close friends called him, was reserved and enigmatic. His writing at times betrayed a sense of loneliness and dislocation. In 2000, after seeing the movie “High Fidelity,” he posted on NetSlaves.com a melancholy reflection on life as a geek. “Geeks live in an eternal conflict between their love of topic and love of people,” he wrote. “I wonder if people substitute fascination with things they can control over things they can’t — other people. You start to wonder if you’ve created a world so limited that you can’t really reach beyond it.” He lamented that he didn’t know what it was to “wake up naked in a strange bed,” but, he wrote, “at 35, I’ve figured out that this is it, at least for now. Anything I do, any life I make, is going to revolve around words and computers and strange, bright people.”
-- Matt Bai, Invisible Blogger , New York Times

(Obituary for Steven Gilliard Jr, 1964-2007.)

Worth logging in to read the thought-provoking, balanced tribute to Steven Gilliard Jr, who was described as 'A humble man ... a brilliant mind ...'. Praise we can all hope to live up to, eh? :)

I've grown bored with my blogging style. My policy, recently, has been to say only nice things about nice people, which means I can't mention two-thirds of the people I'd like to, or say three-quarters of what I'd like.
-- Julian Gough, Outsourcing My Blog

Julian Gough is re-thinking his blog persona. Suggestions welcome. Er, at his blog, not at mine. Suggestions treated with a fair mix of trepidation and suspicion here, I'm afraid.

Interesting idea, the blog persona. I've always avowed I don't have one -- though I don't necessarily assert that I'm any better or worse for that. Perhaps, after all, given the power of branding & the appeal of success, a persona is a good thing to have. Something saleable, something memorable, something the publishers/agents/editors are going to look at & think 'sure, I can work with that'.

Yeah, I think I just talked myself into developing one.

And yet. A 'persona' implies something more fully rounded and more pre-determined than what I've so far crafted -- and than what I can envision myself pulling together. Something more than the series of thoughts & questions I synthesise here when I have teh time.

The blog -- this blog, for example, -- shows part of the real me, is certainly part of what I am (though how much & which part, er, likely remains best answerable by someone else). Yes, I really can be this dismissive & sarcastic. I really can be that passionate & idealistic. Sometimes even at the same time. Sarcastically idealistic. Passionately dismissive. Much like many of my favourite people. :)

Just like meeting someone at a party, I say, a blog is a first, limited-but-often-quite-telling impression. You can usually tell if someone is charismatic or disturbed, calm or crazy, witty or dull. But until you spend time with them you don't know *why* they're that, or *how* it's gonna manifest -- especially under pressure. You don't really know *them*. And you may have cause to rue or remember that first impression later.

The blog (which I just tried to spell as 'glog', for reasons obscure) is more like a window than a door. It provides a sense of what someone's like, but it's not the full picture. Not like sitting in their loungeroom with them is, trying to reach an agreement on which channel to watch while awaiting a phone call about someone's medical tests. Just, y'know, as an example.

I read someplace that you can tell a lot about someone by how they react to three things: 1) lost luggage; 2) an orphan puppy; 3) tangled Christmas lights. I wouldn't bet my degree on it (my answers: 1= with frustration; 2= with adoration; 3= with uncharacteristic patience), but it's another interesting litmus test, eh?


It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
-- Oscar Wilde

Recently -- like, 2 days ago? I have no concept of time -- a friend of mine said he felt he lacked the introspection required to be a successful blogger. I told him I could relate to that. Lately I haven't had much introspection myself. Too busy. Too freaking tired. Too much going on in my reality-based life. And frankly I considered that state pretty terminal until I had 2 weeks off on medical leave and found that, though it was largely impossible for me to get out of a chair without assistance for several days, my brain still, in fact, worked at the rate it was used to working when engaged in the day job -- and it was looking for stuff to do.

All the mental energy used up in the day job (which I don't tend to blog about -- too many other people involved) or the renovations (too boring) or the social commitments (too personal) -- was liberated for two weeks, and suddenly I could re-engage with whatever thoughts were in my head. Thoughts that, when busy, are left to their own devices, to survive or fade, but rarely to expand to a point that invites thorough introspection.

Back at work, and of course the blogging frequency has fallen apart again. What time I do have to be 'introspective' is spent on fiction writing. And this year, somehow, I've written more fiction than ever before. Well, I think I have. I don't really count that stuff. The marvellous benefit of having very little time to write is that I've developed something which amounts to a kind of 'discipline'. I'm leery of taking the quote marks off that -- 'discipline' -- because historically I have never been a disciplined writer and surely it would go against character to magically become one now. Hell, if my life were a novel, people would be saying, 'your character is inconsistent'.

I was about to launch into my personal theory of 'the psychology of the inconsistency of personality', but I don't have time.

Anyhow, discipline. It's been an interesting adventure. And while I will NEVER back down from my assertion that you don't have to write every day to be a writer, I have found some small benefit in an almost daily momentum. But that's probably for another post.

What I *am* saying is... I forget. No, what I *am* saying is that I miss the time when I could blog more. Blogging taught me a lot about writing -- how to loosen up, how to play (with idea, structure, tone). Blogging also gave me a writing release when the fiction writing wasn't working (nowdays, when the fiction writing isn't working, I keep writing fiction because I don't have time to stop; consequently I both love and hate fiction writing more). Blogging also allowed me to connect with the great 'out there', other people who were also blogging. I miss a lot of that stuff.

I'm not quitting, btw. Sounded like I was for a minute there.

The upshot is: I would not trade my present life for the life I had a year and a half ago, when I was bored witless at work for several hours each day, and working in a place that was toxic with fear and bullying. EVEN THOUGH it allowed me more time to surf the net and reflect at length on whatever random ideas I had. Though I do miss one or two of the advantages of a more ordinary life, I am more thoroughly engaged with what I'm doing & where I am than I've ever been.

I'm sorry about the blogging thing -- which is both an apology for anyone who needs one, & a statement of fact. I'm trying to think of a solution, but currently the only thing I can think is that I need more time. Somehow I need more time, WITHOUT taking time away from the day job or the social commitments or the fiction writing or the renovations (because these are all cool things, too).

Darnedest thing. There's probably some other conclusion I could make from that but... I got something I need to do.

"Not every blogger is a narcissist who has nothing to say. In particular there are people in China and Iraq who are blogging - and that is very brave," [Andrew Keen, author of the upcoming book, Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture] says. "But generally I don't see a social benefit. It's just a great vehicle for next-generation media personalities. Why do I want to know what some guy sitting on the west coast of America thinks about Iraq? Would you pay to listen to this person?"
-- Bobbie Johnson, Worldwide words: blogging turns 10