Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’ve been thinking … which often starts out as an innocent activity, and usually ends up getting me into some sort of trouble. This week I’ve been thinking about blogging. Specifically, why I do it.
As expected, I’ve come up with no great conclusions as far as I know, but the journey has been interesting and the pathway full of the usual twists and turns, culs-de-sac, unsigned forks, some unexpected vistas, and plenty of wild geese.
There’s the wanting to
I suppose that writing a blog is like any other sort of writing, except maybe reporting on sports events or doing the obituaries. It’s making something up from nothing, and unless you’re part of a scriptwriting team like they seem to have for American sit-coms, it’s entirely solitary.
Writing is essentially a two-part process. There’s the wanting to enough to make yourself finish, and there’s the doing of it. The first is just burning determination and doggedness, the second involves skills and doggedness. You also need to be able to put things together in a sequence that not only makes sense, but you also need to make it pretty, or at least interesting. Otherwise nobody would want to look at it.
The contents of my brain
In real life there’s the problem of getting your oeuvre published, otherwise nobody will have the opportunity to look at it. Blogging is a soft option, because it’s usually unpaid (certainly in this case!) and doesn’t cost anything to produce or publish. As long as someone else provides the website, of course (thank you Perrys!).
So here I am. I suppose I must have a modicum of doggedness and enough burning determination, because I keep doing it, like a dog scratching a flea bite. I suppose I just love writing, the miracle of a blank screen filling up with the contents of my brain.
A particular trick
Every time I go to the gym and manage to run 2 kilometres in 12 minutes it seems like a miracle and I’m amazed. Writing this blog feels like that. I’m like a magician who has a particular trick that always seems to work, but it comes out differently every time. And I have no idea how this particular trick works.
The other thing about writing is equally fascinating, and that’s what happens when it leaves your control and goes out there into the real world, like your kids going to school or university, or leaving home to work somewhere or start their own families.
Their own expectations
Suddenly they’re gone, and they acquire their own lives quite separate to yours. You can only hope that you prepared them well enough and instilled enough common sense. You can only hope that they don’t have accidents, or get waylaid, or that they don’t get in with a bad crowd.
It’s a bit like building a ship and inviting people to come and watch the launch. They’ll all arrive with their own expectations and feelings. Many will wish you well, some will imagine themselves sailing off in your ship, some will prefer to be somewhere else, or wonder whether you have the skill to build something seaworthy or not.
Take a breath, and let it go
All you can do is to build your ship as well as you can, try to cover all the angles, take a breath, and let it go. Not every ship that’s launched turns into a Titanic, thank goodness.
Although the Titanic turned out to be considerably less successful as a ship than as a story.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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