August 20, 2004

Experiment

I probably shouldn’t start this blog right now because I’ve got enough on my plate. I’ve started another blog which can be found somewhere on the right. I spend so much time obsessively checking my hits and referrers that I’ve got to get my mind on other things.

A blog is an exercise in self love. Who am I to ask people to read about my daily life? This is a lie--I’m not that modest. If I didn’t think that my mind had something exclusive to say, I would not bother writing.

I used to believe that writing was enough. It didn’t matter if I had readers. If it was good, that was satisfying. This is bullshit. Or, rather, a justification for not having readers. There’s something beautiful, human, and fulfilling about sharing your work with other people. An online journal makes this possible.

Being able to be read every minute of the day, all over the world, is something that I could not pass up. Throughout my career as a writer I’ve had to do most everything myself--down to designing book covers. I am sick of getting rejection letters from agents and editors who prize "literary fiction" even though it is as pandering as supermarket pulp.

So I’ll enter the future. Kerouac and Henry Miller were never getting published in real time. Blogging is an untapped medium. It may just evolve into a new artform. A kind of living, breathing fiction.

This is my letter to the world. If people read it, good. If they don’t, fine. At least I’ll be sending it into the electronic ether, and these thoughts might live away from my mind.

4 comments:

jane said...

Likewise (regarding the living, breathing text...). But I don't think a blog is necessarily an exercise in self-love. It can be an exercise in self-exploration, in the act of retracing events, thoughts, observations. Or it can be a form of release (mine's a release valve for my secrets). And where on the righthand side could I find your other blog?

David C. Daniel said...

Welcome to the fray.

keed said...

i hear you clearly and understand every bit. cool

Anonymous said...

lately, i haven't had any goals. maybe that sounds sad & pathedic. maybe in reailty it is. but i guess loosing everything because school is finnished may have just hit all at the same time, whilst getting my end of year results back. so, my future is unknown, & no goals do i have. but i'm starting one, right now. i'm going to read every entry of yours & post a reply on each & every one. why? you ask. because you reminded me of an author i love; thomas lynch. why? because in his book, bodies in motion & at rest, he stated the very phlosiphy i love; "people sometimes ask me why i write. because, i tell them, i don't golf.... ..it's the same thing to me, reading & writing, twins of the one conversation. we're either speaking or being spoken too..." he's right, & so are you. therefore, if you like it or not. you have a friend.

xo. war.

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