Bloggin’ Like Crazy

A published writer who decides to blog has the same problem as an Oscar-winning actress who takes a part in her kid’s elementary school play — the fear that people will come expecting way, WAY too much.  That’s why (I think) many writers rarely, if ever blog.  They think their “public” will be devestated unless they can turn out something like this each and every time. (Note: this is not a put-down of Silas House. I LOVE Silas House. How can you read this and not love Silas House?)

I get the pressure. I get why people feel that way; I’ve felt that way myself hence the sparse posting in the early days of this blog. But while I “get” it, I don’t really understand it. (And yes, in my vernacular, gettin’ it and understanding it are two different things, despite whatever Dictionary of Southern Language you bought says on the subject. “Understanding” takes effort. You have to really think about something to understand it. “Getting” is the quick, Cliff-Noted version. It’s not complete and total, but with the price of gas and all, it’ll do.)

What I don’t understand is this. Blogging is more or less the “reality tv” version of writing. It’s cheap. It’s unfiltered. One can (and in fact, one is encouraged) to do it in her underwear. So why do aspiring writers approach blogging as if they can only do the task properly by spending weeks in research, first; then puttin on a turtleneck and a pair of Lisa Loeb-ish glasses, lighting a candle, and spending the next ten or twelve hours poking the keys with a quill.

Well, one reason is clear — we’re a vain-arse bunch. Everyone wants to look their best, especially after they’ve been honored with a book deal.

Oh, we’ll deny the vanity. We’ll do phone interviews with radio shows, throwing out little gems like “Perfection is so overrated,” while arguing with our editors on the other line about comma placementand the photoshopping of jacket photos. But I have news for all of us, writing-with-one-hand, bloggin’-with-the-other, writers — We ain’t foolin’ nobody. If you even think about publishing an online diary of your own internal monologue, misspelled or not, pointless or not, meritorious or not, that whole vanity ship has already sailed.

So, you might as well be vain and be vain often. Publish the heck out of that internal monologue. Force your darling public to digest everything from your baby photos to your grocery list, captioning everything carefully, as if the mailman who was rude to you yesterday makes a larger point about the condition of society. Just do it often. The practice will make you a better writer the next time you’re published in print, but not if you wait only for the quill-worthy moments.

That’s my philosophy from now on. That’s why you’ll be seeing me blog a lot more from now on. It’ll be fast, frequent, and good. Because that’s more popular than anything on the shelves.

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