Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an article on a Harvard neurologist who had a “writing problem” in the same way “Ernest Hemingway had a drinking problem and Fyodor Dostoevsky had a gambling problem.” That is, she was a compulsive writer. I wonder if there are also compulsive bloggers? Not me, of course. ;-)

I am currently reading Listen to Me: Writing Life into Meaning, by Lynn Lauber. Or I should say I am “using” it since it’s a book of writing exercises and prompts. Lauber writes about the power of personal writing that she witnessed while teaching a writing workshop at a senior center. I believe that Mark Salzman says some thing similar about the power of writing in True Notebooks (haven’t read it yet, but the review in the NY Times looked good). Salzman’s book is about his experience teaching creative writing to “high-risk” juvenile delinquents.

Maybe this is what drives bloggers as well. There’s great satisfaction in writing and sharing one’s writing with others. And now technology makes it possible for ordinary people to write and self-publish. Some more accomplished writers pooh-pooh the quality of writing on blogs. But just because ordinary people don’t always write well doesn’t mean it’s not valuable and meaningful both to the writer and to others. As Miguel at Laughing~Knees put it so eloquently, “…It’s fireside storytelling reborn. Where anyone round the fire can have a go. No hierarchies, no filters, no initiation process that stills the voices of those who don’t make it into some inner circle.”

8:57:53 AM    

One of the great things about blogging is reading other people’s weblogs, the “listening” half of the conversation. It’s a way of discovering other worlds. It would be better, I suppose, if we could visit these places in person, but there isn’t enough time and money to go everywhere. So when bloggers post descriptions and photographs of their corner of the world, we get a little vicarious experience of other places – and other lives. It’s like flying across the country at night and seeing the lights of towns below. I always wonder who these people are and what their lives are like. With blogging it’s like being able to zero in on one household from a satellite, one signal sent up from one blogger pecking away at his or her keyboard in a corner of the spare room.

Yesterday I found Open Brackets via Twilight Café and discovered the blog of a translator living in the South of France (poor dear girl). Not only is what she has to say interesting, but she has links and a blogroll of connections into yet more people’s lives and interests. Then there is Laughing~Knees in Japan and A Year in Cornwall and dervala in Brooklyn or wherever her travels take her. And there are also many other people in not-so-exotic places who describe lives that feel both very familiar and yet completely unique.

8:53:39 AM    

I found this interesting meditation at Laughing Knees about blogging: “perhaps it is kind of latter day, secular confessional… The time that we spend spilling our hearts almost seems to be trying to make up for the years of silence we all endured as we gave up the old institutions…” He also muses on how addictive blogging becomes for writers:

What is it about blogging that gets you coming back, day after day, month after month, and probably year after year?... My hunch is that it’s fireside storytelling reborn. Where anyone round the fire can have a go. No hierarchies, no filters, no initiation process that stills the voices of those who don’t make it into some inner circle. The spreading of the word like wildfire. Minds suddenly set free.

8:51:47 PM    

10:08:48 PM    

Women of the blogosphere

No, it’s not Playboy’s latest ploy. Scary thought. A few weeks ago Dave Pollard wrote a post “Is the blogosphere sexist?” based on discussions he had with some “A-list” bloggers and his own research. He posted several theories about why with half of all bloggers being women few show up on the “top 100” lists, which means women aren’t as frequently linked to as men.

Then I found this post at Burningbird on “The Gender Ghetto” about what happens when women form "groups of webloggers linking to each other, but get scant attention from the males hereabouts.” She laments the lack of representation in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) and says “I want to be an influence now.”

As I commented at Burningbird, I’m a newbie and hadn’t really thought about the gender distribution of blogs. But I’m at a prime point for being influenced by other bloggers as I figure out where I want to take this thing. So who I come across as I travel from blog to blog matters to me. In my experience, I haven’t had any trouble finding other women bloggers. Like Pollard, I may have more links to men (most of the political blogs, for instance), but I check in more frequently with the women bloggers. I don’t want to miss what’s going on in their lives, as with my girlfriends in the real world.

In these discussions, I found a couple of references to Shirky's Law, which says if you want to be popular you have to be there first. Or you have to be loud and pugnacious. But that’s pretty limiting. And not everyone wants to be an influence anyway. As Shirky writes about LiveJournal (the one place where women bloggers are more prominent), some bloggers just want to write for friends, not an impersonal audience:

Publishing an essay and having 3 random people read it is a recipe for disappointment, but publishing an account of your Saturday night and having your 3 closest friends read it feels like a conversation, especially if they follow up with their own accounts.

Also, Indigo Ocean had a similar comment on Pollard’s post:

I don't mind having a small readership. I think my writing is good and I like my blog so I do let people whose blogs I like know about me and ask them to link to me…  I prefer to have people find me through the slow and personal process of reading the blogrolls of like-minded individuals who link to me. That is also how I find new blogs.

Pollard thinks “we need better measures of blog popularity and quality, measures that better identify great new bloggers (and great one-off posts) by some electronic analogue of 'word-of-mouth'.”  Meanwhile, he posted a great set of links to some super Salon blogs written by women. Check it out.

10:57:35 AM    

Letting off steam

Like most bloggers, I imagine, I find my weblog a good place to let off steam. Whether it’s politics, rudeness, or all the little annoying things in life (like the universal lack of good lighting in ladies rooms, which I experienced again today at a trade show) – blogs are a great outlet.

The Christian Science Monitor reports today on employees who blog to let off steam, including one blogger who is getting her writings on cubicle life published in a new book, "Dish It Up, Baby!"

The article also talks about the growing number of internal company blogs used to “cut down on e-mails, faxes, and phone calls.” Who knew? There’s even a new book coming out by some guy named John Lawlor, identified as a “business blogging strategist.” (My first reaction is, "Ugh." My second is, "Hey, can I get paid to do that?")

The blogging throng

The Monitor article also reports the latest weblog count - a lot of people blowing off steam:

There are more than 4 million hosted blogs today, according to Perseus Development Corp., a survey-software developer in Braintree, Mass. The company expects the "blogosphere" to exceed 5 million users by the end of this year and 10 million by the end of 2004.

10:12:05 PM    

Blogging for dummies
There’s a good article in a recent issue of The Seattle Times on Movable Type’s new TypePad blogging software. TypePad is aimed at the new blogger, and the article introduces the wonders of blogging to the uninitiated:

For those unfamiliar with Web logs, you're missing a transformational medium in the evolution of communications. Blogs are the digital equivalent of the diary, the journal, the personal perspective, the self-advertisement, the insider commentary, the literary monograph, the family photo album, the home movie. Which is to say, they aren't any one of those things specifically, but they provide a global electronic venue for all of them.

I tried TypePad recently and liked it, but I couldn’t get it to do certain things I’m now comfortable doing with Radio. However, if I were starting out with my first weblog and I had no technical interest or ability whatsoever, I’d probably opt for TypePad.

4:28:40 PM    

Web logs in education

Web logs are also being used in education. Here’s a great overview for teachers, with great links to examples of how schools are using web logs as tool in learning.

The web in general is increasingly being used as an educational medium. See my post on MIT’s OpenCourseWare project, which makes available courseware from 500 of MIT’s courses.

And see the National Writing Project, which “improves the quality of writing and learning in schools across the country through its professional development model of teachers-teaching-teachers.”

11:32:52 AM    

Blogging for democracy

I’m fascinated by this idea of the web as a tool for transforming political involvement. See my earlier post on this for more.

We are the web

I also posted this bit on the myriad of uses (and misuses) of the web.

Writing online
Also look at my section on writing online - looking at online journals and diaries.

11:46:51 AM