It's a fairly common question set:
Why do you blog? Why do you read blogs? Isn't blogging a rather self-absorbed, attention-seeking activity? And so on.
Questions like these implicitly demand an apologia -- in this case for blogging. I'm not sure I'm an appropriate "Speaker for the Blog" since I've never entirely bought into the "front porch" mentality that permeates blogging rings or circles, nor am I a fan of all genres of blog.
Heck, I don't even have a blogroll.
And I don't allow comments.
Still, I have some ideas.
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In the preface of
Writing to Learn, William Zinsser discusses the development of his book, which was born from the then relatively new concept of writing across the curriculum. "It's an idea I like very much," he writes. "It establishes at an early age the fact that writing is a form of thinking, whatever the subject."
Yes! And later, describing the project, he notes:
The book took on a life of its own and told me how it wanted to be written. I found myself yanked back to many corners of my past -- to long-forgotten people and projects and travels that together taught me much of what I know. I realized that my life had been a broad education and that I couldn't write a book about learning without saying how much it has meant to me to be a generalist in a land that prefers narrow expertise. The anthology began to look suspicously like a memoir.
[...]
[W]e write to find out what we know and what we want to say. I thought of how often as a writer I had made clear to myself some subject I had previously known nothing about by just putting one sentence after another -- by reasoning my way in sequential steps to its meaning. [...] Writing and thinking and learning [a]re the same process.
We write to find out what we know and what we want to say. Yes! again. Splendidly put, and, for me, anyway, spot on. Clear writing is clear thinking. If one can communicate
in clear prose what he has read or seen, for example, it will read like clearly articulated thought. Better still, if one can synthesize what he has read, seen, and experienced and still manage clarity -- well, good work.
No. That's
Good. Work. Heh, heh, heh.
Anyway, that's why I decided to begin Mental multivitamin -- to write across this autodidact's, this unabashed
generalist's curriculum; to synthesize what I was learning about astronomy and history and physics and current events and literature and technology and art and, yes, myself, my family, and the world. I write to learn,
to know. _________________________
As far as seeking attention, well, the act of putting the pen to the paper (or the fingers to the keyboard) is
always the act of drawing attention to oneself, even if it is only to draw one's own attention to one's deepest sense of self (as in a personal journal, for example). That is the nature of communication, no? To draw attention to one's
self and to one's message. But to one's
self first:
Look! Look! Oh, look! Listen! Can you hear me? Is this thing on?I'm not entirely sure that this is a bad thing. George Orwell certainly didn't think it was. From "
Why I Write":
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen--in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all--and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
More vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money -- that does sound a little like he's talking about bloggers, doesn't it? Heh, heh, heh. (For the record, though, I do think it's a mistake to brand all bloggers "serious writers." Ahem.)
[Trailing off in thought...]
Maybe, in the end, the question of whether blogging is an attention-seeking and/or self-absorbed activity is all a matter of intent, and only the writer has the truest understanding of his or her intent. There are clues -- some so obvious, it's painful to see. And -- I say this gingerly -- I happen to think that some blogging genres, including "mommy blogs" and, yes, homeschooling blogs, social blogs (
e.g., My Space), can and all too often
do trip-trop into a place that loudly echoes with the collective cry: "Attention must be paid! Attention must be paid!" or, worse, the plaintive version of "Look at me! Look at me!"
But... that's certainly not a problem, is it? Because communication is a transaction, and no one can
force me or you to listen or read or visit or even respond to their cries. No one can
make us pay attention or look, right? Communication is a transaction: One believes he has something to say. He says it. Either another listens... or he doesn't. No one can
force you or me to listen... or read... or visit a blog.
So if, in fact, the medium is inherently attention-seeking, it also refuses to guarantee gratification on that score.
_________________________
The clock has betrayed me. This is a conclusion-free post. Consider it an invitation to draw your own conclusions about blogging, eh?
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Falling down, falling down. All the leaves are falling down....
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