Why do you blog?
A very beautiful woman known to many of you as "Wanderlusting" has asked on her blog, "why do you blog?" I, being a reserved man of few words, filled her comments with a huge response.
I felt bad about this and decided to repost it here, along with a link to her post so that you can go read it and reply to her as well, because she is much prettier than I am and also a better writer.
Here is why I blog:
I blog because a famous former Canadian named Patricia Pearson, of the National Post, once said of my steadily flowing insane emailed comments on her articles that I was funny and needed to write. She sent me her editor's email address and insisted that I write up some articles and submit them.
Little did I realize that she was not getting along with The Post at this time and perhaps this was a cruel joke or form of revenge on her editor, but that is neither here nor there.
Anyway I, being no pillar of self-confidence, emailed another famous writer I also liked to bombard with my ridiculous opinions, a woman named Kathleen Parker, who is a syndicated columnist. I told her what Patricia had said and asked for her views on the matter. She agreed with Patricia. "Go for it," she said, and insisted that I was more often funny than annoying, which made me feel good, and then confused.
So, I wrote up several articles and submitted them to Patricia's editor. They were all soundly rejected, without a word of explanation.
I asked Patricia where I went wrong. She asked to see what I had submitted. She sent it back with one simple suggestion, "take the anger out."
I rewrote them, sedating the anger with alcohol whenever possible, and tried submitting them to other newspapers and magazines - generally anything I could think of that might have a use for them or have printed anything similar from other writers.
No luck. No one wanted to print anything that I had to say. Apparently the world just isn't ready to read about rednecks, farting, pooping, and lunatics in traffic. Or at least, not when I write about it.
So, now having been excited at the idea of having my voice be heard, only to be frustrated by failure, I turned to blogging.
I had hoped that blogging would improve my writing, but without an editor to tell me where I've gone wrong, I guess I've merely maintained my ability to punch keys in the proper order to form words, which then lead to paragraphs, and ultimately end up as some long rant on the internet that 6 people read. And then they comment and say,
"Take the anger out."
Still, I envy those who have journalism training and receive a paycheck for writing. I don't feel that bloggers are geeks. I feel that we are writers and wanna-be-writers. And many of us are people who have a thing or two to say, but who would not otherwise be heard. The blog is, for many of us, our only opportunity to express ourselves to any effect whatever.
And also, as it turns out, the blog is a place where a man in Memphis, Tennessee can become friends with a woman in Canada and a man in Thailand and a woman in Australia and a woman in England, and we can all get together in an odd electronic way and talk about life and love and all the things that interest us.
And how cool is that?
You have read this article blogging
with the title Why Do You Blog?. You can bookmark this page URL http://thebohemianbunny.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-do-you-blog.html. Thanks!
