Musings on Writing and Other Stuff

When I began to blog, I did so with the mission statement, “Musings on writing and other stuff”. I believe that, thus far at least, I have written more-or-less exclusively about writing, and not at all about ‘other stuff’. Perhaps it is time to alter the balance a little bit, to shift the emphasis.

Having written this blog every day for 145 days, I asked a friend about his reactions to it. He made some good and useful points, one of which was that he felt that I was practising being a blogger. I think, in a way, that he was right. It isn’t that I don’t believe what I say, because I do, but he knows that I hold the views I’ve expressed here in the past four or five months, and he knows that I air them regularly and without embarrassment. He has heard it all before.

When it comes to writing fiction, I am the sort of person who opens a vein. The experience is very real to me, visceral almost, and it matters very much. I think that, at least in part, is why I left it so late to begin to write in earnest. I hope that I will one day be the sort of blogger who gets down and dirty, and who shares the very real, but that means getting personal, really letting you into my life, and, let’s face it, I don’t know you. 

It isn’t always terribly easy to open a vein to fictionalise ideas, so, imagine how painful it might be to open a vein to share what is personal. Imagine opening a vein, sharing the ideas and then having to somehow justify them to a divided audience, to strangers who can maintain a veil of privacy while I expose myself to the World.

It can be done. I have seen it done, often beautifully, with guts and great heart, and those blogs leave their mark upon me. I always find myself feeling very protective towards those bloggers, though. I always find myself trawling the comments on those blogs to make sure that the bloggers' remarks have been understood and appreciated. 

I always think it is very brave and rather wonderful when people are willing to lay themselves bare in this way. At the same time, I think it might be rather foolish to try to do it myself. 

We shall see.