Not just me then

Why, this article could have been written by me! Apart from, er, the "enormous literary figure and cultural icon". Well, I mean, I might be enormous, and I might be an icon. (Hey! I might! Could happen!) But anyway.

"America, it turns out, is full of smart, clever, creative people who happen to have no interest in working and whose employers have unwisely given them Internet access."

Quite.

"I find that my own blogging is increasingly mechanical and formulaic. As an artist, my normal impulse is to write things that people don't care about and, ideally, can't even understand. Gibberish."

Exactly.

You know, it's a funny thing. I've noticed a trend (admittedly tiny): the Second Blog. People start a blog, have fun with it, then find that they've developed some kind of blog persona and even (gasp!) a readership. And what started out formless has become more defined; unfortunately, that de facto definition excludes certain aspects of themselves, certain interests that they want to write about. But The Readers Don't Care. So the Second Blog is born to contain those... other things.

It seems to me that the Second Blog - usually less frequently tended, less widely read - often contains the stuff that the blogger actually cares about the most. In my case, knitting*. I'm sure you can all fill in your own examples. And I suspect the main blog is poorer as a result.

Funny that when I started the Scrivenings, and filled it with whatever took my fancy, knitting featured fairly regularly. My exclusively knitting blog, though, is withering away through neglect. I got that hit of readerly attention, and I found it harder to devote energy to blogging elsewhere because, well, there was no feedback**.

And at the same time, my main blog experienced a shift in tone. More chatty. I found myself talking directly to certain, vocal readers/commenters, posting things with just one or two people in mind. The comments are fun, but take on a life of their own - well, that's the fun part. I'm sometimes reminded of extemporanea's comment on a particular roleplaying game: "I don't know why I bother to come up with stories, I should just sit you all in a room together, you'd create plenty of action."***

But it's odd, really, to think that if there were any posts I was actually proud of (not sure if there are, but hypothetically), they would have been back in the early days. Once upon a time I was actually writing, a bit. Much to my surprise and confusion, I was actually included in another blogger's list of "People who have something to say". I felt rather guilty when I discovered that; you'd think if it were true, I myself would know what I had to say, and I haven't a clue. I suspect myself of conning the internet public with Big Words. I think I'm still on that list, but I'm more certain than ever that I shouldn't be.

There are too many "buts" in this post. A stylistic failure that I think is rather revealing.

I love all you commenters dearly. I do.

But:

I reserve the right to post things that are not funny. Or even interesting to anybody but me. And to keep doing so in the face of yawning silence. I think there's a tiny chance that if I do so, I'll actually find that Something to Say.

So there.

_____
* And cats.
** Then again it could have something to do with my lack of knitting progress lately. Different story.
*** Except far more beautifully and wittily expressed.