The Man Behind The Curtain

I finished cutting the lawn around 5:30, and since I had already had a light supper, I decided to pack up my computer and head down to Read’s to write for a few hours. With the weather hot and sunny, I knew most people would want to sit at the bistro tables outside rather than the comfy chairs inside. I need a power outlet handy in the likely event my computer loses its charge.  I also need to be able to sit where there is no glare on my screen.  The air conditioning also helps.  And the coffee, which is always great there.

An author friend wrote to me recently, asking if I would like to participate in a blog tour of sorts.  She is also a blogger, and she asked if I could share some insight into how I go about planning, drafting, and publishing my pieces.   I was very honoured to be asked to participate.  I have been blogging for almost three years, and my viewership is somewhat limited to family and friends. I don’t go out of my way to promote it.  Most of the time, I’m not sure why I do it in the first place.  Writers write in anticipation of getting discovered, perhaps even published, right?

I should really begin at the beginning, since blogging sometimes doesn’t necessitate a beginning or an ending.  If you back track through my entries, you’ll notice that the first few paragraphs often start as a sort of preamble, which may or may not tie in as tidily as I’d like with the main body.  I often edit them, sometimes drastically, but in the end I usually leave them intact.  Blogging is different from most forms of writing in that it is innately raw.  The fact is, most bloggers are not trained writers.  Blogging is a recent phenomenon, although not entirely.  My grandmother is in her early nineties, and has written boxes of diaries and journals in her lifetime.  She wrote mostly about the weather, current events, and people who stopped by to visit her.  She wrote about her day-to-day experiences, not unlike I do with my blog.  The difference is that she kept her work private, and she never wrote in a way that would lend itself to public viewing.  If you keep a diary or journal, in a sense, you’re a blogger.

It also makes you a writer. 

There is a misconception about writers.  They have to be super-smart.  They are always eccentric.  They’re artsy hipsters that wear hemp bracelets and pierce their tongues.  They read obscene amounts every single day.  They’re total snobs.  They all love Margaret Atwood.  Writers are stereotyped as much as any segment of society.  I know writers that may or may not fit any combination of the above. 

How do I rank in all this?  I graduated with a 76% average.  I did well in English and History courses, but struggled greatly with Math and Science, so it kind of averaged out.  I like to read, but I wouldn’t say I love it.  I am a very slow reader.  I often back up and reread paragraphs, and sometimes whole chapters to be sure I didn’t miss anything.  It’s possible I need reading glasses.  I like learning, and as a result, I have diverse tastes in movies, music, and books.  I truly hope people don’t view me as a snob.  I’ve yet to enjoy a Margaret Atwood novel, but I respect her for what she has accomplished.  I have never owned a hemp bracelet.  Yet a writer I am.

In the spirit of the blog tour, I am including some headers for paragraphs, which I don’t normally do in my usual posts.  That’s okay, because when you are taking part in something beyond your norm, and indeed your comfort zone, you sometimes have to follow along.  Following along is fine, because ultimately writers will blaze their own trails regardless.

How do you start your writing projects?

I am not an author.  For many years I have labeled myself ‘aspiring author’.  That’s like saying you’re almost finished a degree.  It’s all well and good that you’re doing it, but it’s ultimately not as impressive that you haven’t actually finished.  Starting a blog in essence provided me an opportunity to work on smaller pieces that I knew I could finish relatively quickly.  It gave me a sense of accomplishment.  Ask any would-be author, and they’ll tell you they have countless ideas in a virtual ‘parking lot’ just waiting to be drawn out.  Some are in sketch books in various degrees of development.  Some are on scraps of paper, some gestating for months, even years in tattered Hilroy scribblers.  My ideas are all over the place, scattered over some five or six different flash drives I occasionally lose and find again over and over.  I’m getting better the older I get; I have one flash drive that I try to keep all writing on now, and I back up my major works on my computer.  They can’t both go missing, can they?

How do you continue your writing projects?

If you’d like to get the true muse behind The Hole In The Fence, I’d recommend reading my first entry, called ‘The First Glimpse’.  I would then also draw your attention to an entry I wrote about a year later called ‘Quit Stalling’.  I wrote that one out of guilt, because I had stepped away from the blog for several weeks.  When you start a blog, it becomes a commitment to which only you hold yourself accountable.  ‘Quit Stalling’ was more a pep talk to myself to just sit down and start writing after a period of non-productivity.  It turned out decent enough, so I posted it.  What I try to keep in my blog is that rawness of the ideas themselves.  I still try to edit to the best of my ability.  One of my goals is to strengthen my writing as I continue to work on my fiction.

What makes a blog a blog?  It is, again, unique as a form of writing in that it can be anything the writer wants it to be.  A product of the internet, and visible via the world-wide web anywhere you can pick up a wi-fi signal, you can make your blog as plain or extravagant as you want.  Some blogs are intricately designed with tabs, links, videos, pictures, and other whistles and bells.  Not all of these are necessarily great blogs either.  I have read very prominent blogs that have, in my opinion, awful writing, with no attention to basic conventions and principles of the written language.  What the audience likes in blogs like these is the visceral reactions, the bombast, the shock and awe. 

Once you decide to write a blog, what will be its identity?  I mentioned above that some blogs are great, others less so.  What makes one good versus bad?  Like any form of entertainment, there is no universal standard.  Lots of people love Lady Gaga, while I think she’s mediocre at best.  I wouldn’t claim she’s any good, but most pop music fans like her.  I’ve seen movies that critics lambasted, but I thoroughly enjoyed.  50 Shades Of Grey was immensely popular, but the few paragraphs I read were mind-numbing.  If you are an artist, some people will like your work, while others won’t.  That’s the nature of being an artist.  I get a lot of positive feedback from my writing, but I am sure I could send my work to hundreds of publishers only to have them rip me to shreds.  That’s another benefit to blogging.  It is good for your self-esteem, if only in the moment.

I chose to keep my blog observational at its core.  My favourite writers are two ‘Andy’s.  Andy MacDonald, the subject of my penultimate posting, was an extraordinary story teller.  He took simple, everyday happenings and created wonderfully witty tales.  His books are among the select few I reread frequently.  The other is the late Andrew Rooney.  Best known for his commentary on 60 Minutes, Andy was a columnist who shot from the hip, telling it exactly as he saw it, but had the poise to tackle challenging issues without necessarily tipping his hand one way or the other.  He was able to present his views without being preachy.  He left the reader to make up his or her own mind. 

I try to approach my blog with both Andy’s’ principles.  I want people to smile when they read it.  I’d like them to be able to relate my work to their own experiences.  I suppose most writers seek a connection with their audience, and I’m no different.  I’ve noticed that my entries that have a sentimental basis are the best received.  Some of the pieces of which I’m most proud are among the least viewed.  Some of them were, at the time they were published, excellent, while I now look back on them as rubbish.  One thing I’ve promised myself not to do is to go back and overhaul them.  I might fix grammar here and there, because I have no editor, and can’t always catch everything no matter how long I revise them, but the content has to remain the same.  ‘The Fence’ is a scrap book, and it represents me as a writer at the time I wrote it.

How do you finish your projects?

What are my routines?  There’s not much magic to share, I’m afraid.  I often wonder if other writers feel like the Wizard of Oz, terrified to be exposed.  Tonight, I showed up at Read’s, my favourite little coffee shop, bought a medium decaf because it’s after supper, set myself up in a comfy chair near an outlet, and started a new document.  It’s taken me about an hour and a half to write what you’ve just read, and as I literally type these words, I’ve yet to look back beyond this paragraph.  I will have, of course, by the time it’s published to ‘The Fence’.  Ideas are floating around for my next entry, but it might be another month before it’s developed enough to publish.  Then again, I might find myself inspired tomorrow morning, and before nightfall the next entry will be up.  This represents the 35^th official ‘Fence’ blog post, because I don’t count the two short stories and my annual top twenty albums list that appear.  In three years, that averages out to once a month, which may or may not be slow compared to other bloggers.  I have a friend who blogs almost daily, and I admire what he’s doing.  While his are brief, concise pieces, mine tend to average around three or four pages each on a standard Word document in size 12 font.  I think it takes great skill to write within smaller parameters.  I have a background graphic, but otherwise no photos or video links.  It’s just not my style.

Other bloggers, as I mentioned earlier, prefer to lay it all out there, as though they just sneezed their ideas all over the screen.  Some of them get a staggering amount of hits.  I try to aim for more stringent, well-developed ideas, with an emphasis on quality over quantity.  I’m probably displaying that writer snobbery, but I won’t apologize for my motivations.  If I can only share one piece of advice, it’s to never compromise your artistic integrity.  Write for your own reasons.  You don’t have to reveal what’s behind the curtain.  Everyone else will just have to deal.