Writing Right Along

Welcome to any new visitors who may have come over from How to Save the World, or elsewhere (and thanks to Dave Pollard for the link - it's very much appreciated.) And thanks to the new readers who left comments - it's great to meet you and hear your voices here. I wish I could greet you with a great sunny picture, but instead this is what we woke up to today in Montreal - the first of the season. I went out mid-morning and ran errands, and my last-year's boots immediately got wet, so it's obviously also time for some Sno-Seal, as well as hats, scarves, gloves, boots....aaargh. I had a dentist appointment this afternoon and went off, reluctantly, on the bus and metro instead of on my bike. It's going to be hard to pry me off this year, though unlike this commuter I'm not going to ride on snow and ice.

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The post Dave linked to was this one, about writing and resting. If that interested you, you might like to re-read a set of three posts from a year ago when I was apparently thinking about the same sorts of things. Some new thoughts occur, so if the current spate of busyness ever abates, maybe I'll be able to write a bit more on the topic. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Does blogging do it for you, or are you trying or longing to write a longer work - or maybe already have? How do you see the interplay between these two types of writing - do they feed each other or not, in your own writing life?

Writing On 1

...Blogging has given me more - in terms of friendship, encouragement, and companionship - than any other art form I’ve engaged in. It’s kept me writing through difficulties and good times both and been almost always positive. It’s only been in the six or eight months that I’ve begun to question my involvement in it, and to think about changing the way I use the medium. It’s not a question of not having anything to say; for better or worse, I always seem to come up with something, and the readers are kind enough to let me think it matters to them. But I don’t want to repeat myself. I’ve written so much about “place,” for example, that I doubt if I have anything new to offer...

Writing On 2

...My blog posts are generally between 500 and 100 words long. When V.S. Naipaul says he is grateful to write 500 good words a day, or Orhan Pamuk speaks of producing his daily half-page, they are not talking about the same thing as a 500-word blog post, both because those 500 words have not been written and rewritten as intensively, and because they are not written as part of a larger whole. A book requires sustained effort in one direction; it is not a sprint, or a series of heats to be run in quick succession, but a matter of endurance, both mental and emotional. It also requires the creation of a vision and a structure that is large and complex, which you nevertheless know, at the beginning, will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt several times...

Writing On 3

...A book also clings to you. As much as I am sometimes ready to move on, this thing I’ve created still needs me to help find readers for it, talk about its issues, answer the questions it poses. I find I cannot disengage intellectually from the ideas it sets forth; it is not a blog post or even a blog series I can terminate whenever I choose, or which is quickly forgotten by readers ready for the next subject, the next bright idea. The ephemeral nature of the web, and blogging in particular, have been discussed a lot and are always mentioned as a drawback for the serious writer – and I agree – but they are also a refuge (and can be an excuse) for those of us who don’t want, or are afraid, to put our hearts and abilities on the line and devote years of our lives into projects of uncertain return. And with conventional publishing being the way it is, perhaps that is wise -- but I wonder if we are perhaps settling for something too facile because it is also so satisfying both in the short term, and repeatedly, without requiring anything more from us...

Comments

[Jeremayakovka]

Thank you for putting your finger on our common pulse.

[Jim Murdoch]

When it comes to blogging I try to follow the adage, "Leave 'em wanting more." I try and keep myself to two posts a week and even when I have a surplus, which I happen to do at the moment of half a dozen, I still keep the posts down. One never knows when a dry spell might hit. The main reason though, as you realise yourself, is to be fair to both myself and my audience.

I see a lot of people shoving out filler articles usually pointing their readers to other posts so that they know they're not being forgotten. I don't phone my own daughter every so why would I feel the need to make daily contact with strangers? The reason I don't call my daughter every day is that neither of us needs that kind of constant reassurance. She knows I love her. I know she loves me. We make contact when there's something to talk about.

The relationship between a writer and his readers is comparable. I want them to hear what I have to say and they want to hear it but all of us want it to be meaningful. It might take me three hours to compose my post compared to the three minutes it takes them to read it but none of us want to waste our time.

My blog is not a novel, at least it is nothing like the novels I write, but it is analogous to a book albeit a kind of wandering memoir, something like Cheaper by the Dozen. I'm not sure my blogs will ever be collected and bound but I'd like to think the quality of the writing is of a standard that they could be. I use my blog to attract people to my writing. I would be misrepresenting myself something rotten if I didn't aim high

[language hat]

First snow here too. I AM NOT READY. But it is pretty, so there's that.

Thanks for all the great posts; keep 'em coming!

[beth]

Thanks, Jeremayakova. glad to have made your acquaintance!

Hi Jim - and thanks very much for this thoughtful comment. I'm happy to have found your blog now, too, and have subscribed to your feed so I'll be reading, and probably commenting, there as well since we seem to be concerned about some of the same things!

I edit as I write and write long sentences too. But it's good to have spouses who will call us on it when we get too convoluted!

LH: thanks - wow, you're that much further south and you've gotten snow. My dad did too, in central NY, where we're headed tomorrow, and I guess there was plenty in the hills of Pennsylvania. So far it hasn't been pretty here - too grey overhead, and too wet. But those sunny, snowy days will come. Happy Thanksgiving!

[Jim Murdoch]

Glad to find you too. I have also subscribed to your blog.

I have a different take on rests which you might find useful.

When I was young I used to weight train. I took the whole thing very seriously. I read up on it and followed the advice I was given. The thing about that kind of exercise is that it is a slow process and a poor regime can do a lot of harm.

First, before anything else, you eat and eat well. Then you let what you have eaten digest. Then exercise. But not too much. Eat again and rest. If you're going to exercise two days in a row make sure you don't work the same set of muscles. Repeat ad infinitum.

Writing is no different. If you don't take in stimuli – by reading especially – you have nothing to write about. You will drain your reserves. And, if you keep going, you'll run dry. Some days I write prose, sometimes poetry, sometimes blogs, exercising different muscles.

I often feel guilty when I'm not working on my novel. The thing is, I'm always working on my novel. As I wrote once, "Writers don't have real lives, they have ongoing research."

[Dave]

Beth, your Post #3 link doesn't work.

[Theriomorph]

Love these, Beth, and thank you for writing them.

Have come to a decision about shifting the way I blog, after a year or so of paying close attention to the stuff you raise in here. For me, the benefits of blogging (especially the warmth of the connections to the neat people I meet via the blog world) become the other edge of the sword - cutting away time and energy for more sustained projects. For me, it is those sustained projects which generate income possibilities (teaching opportunities, mainly), and while I would love to be a person who didn't have to worry about this, lacking the capacity for mercenary marriage or a trust fund, it is a real concern.

The deeper writing question, though, about whether the instant gratification and shiny-object MO of blogging assists in avoiding the very real commitment and risk involved in longer, more intensively wrought and re-wrought work, is an important one to examine.

For me, the warm fuzzy bits make blogging easy, fun, and rewarding, but the very real avoidance bits - whether because I'm actively avoiding the risks or just too tired - make it destructive to larger life goals.

There's a lot of sustenance and good in what blogging has done for my writing life. There is also distraction away from the writing that will both challenge and sustain me the most, and potentially offer the most to readers.

For me (can't speak for anyone else), the solution (the one I'm going to try, anyway) is to refocus my blogging to actively serve the longer works, and carefully limit the time I allow for it. In theory, this should allow for the best of both worlds to remain.

Long comment, apologies.

Glad to have discovered your words via this web - that's surely one of the nicest benefits.

[Theriomorph]

Oh, and here's 3:

http://cassandrapages.typepad.com/the_cassandra_pages/2006/12/writing_on_3.html

[ruth]

hello beth,

just stopping by!

i AM trying to write a book which is - for better or worse - very much related to (but different from in all the ways you mention, hopefully) my blog. Infact it started out as a book, then became a blog etc. I often use the blog as a second step in a warm up: First I hand write, then I do a short quick blog piece to see if anything forms. then i go back to my book, hopefully having planted a seed somewhere.

What I have had to cut down on is blog reading, unfortunately, as I have tried to commit myself to reading novels again. which is why, though I often think of you, I rarely say hello!

And isn't it a shame that blog is such an awful word?

[Dave]

Beth, your third link still isn't working here. I think Theriomorph has it right.