Why “blog?” Why not “webl?” Because Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down (commence dodging to-mah-toes).
Why am I blogging? I am a functional mute (sometimes, I wish I were a literal mute, but that’s for another day). Sometimes, I need to say something, and am unable to speak the words which would express the ideas. As a result, I retreat to my notebook, shredded and compressed from the finest rain forests, and frolic amongst its leaves. Maybe that effort isn’t enough. This third novel attempt is brimming over, boiling with ideas I’ve been having for the better part of two years. How many people to date have read it? One. The net effect is the same. My words fall upon eyes glazed over, having read the words several times over already. I know what I’ve said, sometimes even before its been written.
Are my ideas so important they should be recorded in a semi-tangible state? Probably not, but that’s the miracle of the internet. It makes valuable information accessible by the masses, and devalues widespread information. Instant Publishing. Countless voices are given a digital soapbox in the digital ether. There’s a satisfying mystery surrounding the possibility the world at large might hear you. However, there’s also a strong responsibility inherent in making your thoughts available to others. It forms a pseudo teacher-student relationship with the reader, and the teacher must assume a teacher’s responsibility. While I dare not delineate firm the limits of those duties, allow me to propose enlightenment and encouragement as the two most important, at least for me.
Given that plenty of everything/nothing blogs concern themselves with everything and nothing (can that subsequently be considered concern if we treat them so lightly?), by this point, we’ve exceeded the original scope of this Hello World. Certainly, if anyone were to start a blog to enlighten and encourage, the politically-slanted blogs would be the ones, doing their damnedest to help the world see their political views are correct. I can assure you up front this will not be a political blog, for I don’t know jack about politics. To be fair, I don’t know any Jacks.
What I do pretend to begin to claim a partial proficiency in is the writing process, and even then, I’m a gardener with rusty shears, trying to prune through the briars and thatches of my own writing, hopefully producing some sort of literary topiary, pleasing to the common reader as well as the aesthete (How’s that for attempting to convince you I’m competent AND modest?).
How do I intend to enlighten you? Many of you have never attempted to write a novel, but I would hope all of you have desired something so deeply it makes you suffer. Love hurts, and the writing process hurts. Somewhere in the intersection of the two, I stand sweating blood. I’m going to make an attempt to record my insights into the “writing process.” If nothing else, it will show you a new form of suffering.
How do I intend to encourage you? Simple. I am no longer as good a writer as once I was. Oh, I may be proficient in legal writing. Introduction, roadmap, topics one, two, three, summation. I can follow the forms like a martial artist performing a kata from rote muscle memory. But the creative spark has fizzled like a candle in a vacuum. I’ve allowed my skills to lay fallow in the field for far too long, and now I reap naught but withered sprouts and too short stories. However, the field still bore crops, no matter how tiny and insignificant. As I travel along the path, attempt to rediscover my “voice,” hopefully you’ll be encouraged to also write something.
Good ship blog, with this bottle of Thunderbird wine, I christen thee Writ. Come on, would you waste expensive champagne on a ship’s hull? Ok, would you waste it on a blog?
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