…in which I talk about blogging, writing, and allowing myself to make misteaks.
So I’ve got a new website, which currently has nothing on it, and a new blog, upon which I haven’t fully decided what I’m going to write. Way back when, when I started my LiveJournal, I was a pretty avid blogger, but I can’t say that there was that much introspection on those early posts. Most just served to keep people up to date on what I was doing. While I see the value in that, I’m not sure that’s the kind of blog I really want to have. Internet fame shouldn’t mean anything to me, but I do have a deep seated need for recognition and if writing something on the internet to get people to see it serves that purpose, then so be it. My problem is that I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to write. I know what I don’t want to write however, and its a struggle to write around that.
I don’t want a blog that’s all ranting and bemoaning. I don’t want a blog that tries to draw pity or illicit any kind of consolation. I don’t want to fill my blog with memes, I’ll leave those to LiveJournal. I don’t want my blog to be just endless babble with no thought or entertainment value. This is not to say that every entry should make the reader take pause and think about their lives or anything, but I at least want to try to do some thinking on my own as I write these entries. I want to feel like I’m growing as a person as I type up these entries of self discovery.
Part of what keeps me from writing is that I’m afraid of bad writing. That’s a fair fear, but it takes bad writing to create good writing. The same is true of all art, and its something I have a hard time with. It’s one of the things that I struggle with regularly in my photography and why I’m afraid to draw. I don’t want to do anything badly, so I don’t do anything at all. We learn to do things by making mistakes and doing things wrong, but I’ve grown up to be such an anal retentive perfectionist, it goes against my core nature to allow myself to screw things up. To that end, the book “Bird By Bird” has been suggested to me and I plan to read it next (I’d be reading it now, but it was hiding in my studio and I’d forgotten about it completely). I need to break out of this armor of perfection and allow myself to screw up more. So prepare yourself for a barrage of badly thought out, poorly constructed blogging entries as I attempt to find my voice and in as much, find my self, again.
Just as a point of clarity, I will be using this blog as a place to really focus on myself and try to get some real thinking and writing done. My LiveJournal will be a comprehensive blog, containing not only crossposted entries from here, but also including the silly memes, quizzes, photos, and other random rants and whines that I don’t wish to share here.
2 replies on “Finding My Voice…”
Congrats on the new site. I think the key to best blogging is to not be afraid of what people will think — then just go out and write. I worry about the quality of my writing all the time, but unless I write it will not improve.
Congrats on the new site. I think the key to best blogging is to not be afraid of what people will think — then just go out and write. I worry about the quality of my writing all the time, but unless I write it will not improve.