At lunch with friends today, one woman said she was computer literate, but admitted she didn’t understand why anyone would read my blog, or any blog, actually. Another friend said she read my blog because it was interesting. I was glad she supplied a response because my mind had gone blank — why would anyone read my blog?
People unfamiliar with blogging often equate these web logs — these online journals — with the diaries many of us kept as children. “I had oatmeal for breakfast. I went to school. Bobby pulled my hair. I did my homework then Mom let me watch television.” Deadly dull lists of activities no one, including us, ever cared about. Admittedly, many bloggers do relate the minutiae of their day, but mostly people talk about what is important to them.
O
ne online friend, a woman who lost her soul mate a month before I lost mine, started a blog to chronicle her new life. She’s about to become a nomad, living and traveling in a small motor home. Among other things, she will be searching for a new life, a new place, maybe even happiness. Her blog tells of her preparations, and once she’s on the road, that blog will tell of her adventures.
Many online author friends blog about their available books, their publishing experiences, the books they read and review, the stories they are writing.
People with expertise in various fields give advice. Literary agents tell authors how to get published, hikers tell about their experiences in the wilderness, mothers give advice or seek support with raising children, businesses blog about their products, crafty folk share patterns and photos of finished projects, techno-types discuss the newest technology.
And me . . . I write about myself — my ideas, my hopes, my experiences, what I’ve learned from those experiences — and anything that captures the attention of my magpie mind. I write this blog because . . . well, because I am a writer. Nothing seems real to me until I’ve put it into words, though I am learning to be in the moment, to be alive without needing to explain to myself what I am feeling.
Until the past few months, most people who read this blog have been online friends or strangers, which was — is — wonderful, but now people I know in real life are also reading this blog. There is a quiet joy in being told, “I read your blog last night.”
Of course, that’s more about why I write this blog than why people read it. I’d planned to talk about how important stories are, how stories connect us, how the life stories people choose to share with us show us our similarities. I’d planned to say we read blogs for the same reason we read fiction — to live and learn and grow vicariously. Not all of us might be able to live on the road, for example, yet we can all share in the struggles and triumphs of those who do. In the end, I decided not to focus on the storytelling aspect of blogging. The truth is much simpler than that. As my friend said, we read a particular blog because it’s interesting.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
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Finding Time to Write
April 24, 2012 — Pat BertramThen I wrote a simple blog post. It was a recap of on online discussion, so it shouldn’t have taken me long, but it did. I’ve heard that people should allocate twenty minutes to updating their blogs, but somehow, my twenty-minute blogs end up taking hours. Writing is how I think, and sometimes it takes a while for the thoughts to coalesce. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right words to express the thoughts. And sometimes it takes a while to edit and copyedit the article to make sure it’s readable and that my point is clear. All those “a while”s added up to three hours yesterday.
When I finally posted the blog, I took time out for a walk and a meal, then I returned to the computer and had an email conversation with a friend who had also suffered the loss of her mate. Since she seems to have reached a place of peace, I wanted to know how she did it. I know I can go on alone since I am doing it, but the thing that still makes me feel as if I’m about to fall off the earth is that he is dead. No matter how well I do, no matter how much peace I attain, he will always be dead. Of course she had no answers for me — one person’s way of learning to live without is not the same as another’s — but she did say something that struck a chord: “the world comes back.” This was an important conversation for me, and I’m glad I had the time to spend, but still, writing my side of the exchange took a couple of hours.
I love comments on my blog, and always enjoy communicating with those who do comment, but that takes time. Yesterday evening, it took me almost an hour to write my responses.
And finally, Facebook. Need I say more? Well, maybe I do. I had several messages that required replies, discussions that needed input, updates that cried out for comments. In all, that added a couple more hours of writing to my writing time.
That’s when I realized why I have no time to write — I spend all my time writing! So, to find time to write, all I need to do is stop writing.