beautiful monsters

Bl*g bl*ggidy bl*g

We had an end of course potluck last night. It was so lovely to sit around the fire, drink wine, eat good food, and talk about stuff that didn’t involve critiquing each other’s work!

Someone brought along a yummy salad that had bean sprouts in it, and I helped myself to some and munched away. It wasn’t until I’d cleaned my plate that I thought to check if there were any azuki beans. Golly, I thought. I could’ve died just now. Doh! But there didn’t seem to be any azuki beans (they’re getting quite common in sprout mixes, so I really should be more careful) and I still seem to be here.

So who are you anyway, and what do you want?

I know why I blog. I just love writing. Blogging gives me the incentive to write regularly, and I genuinely believe that my writing is improving – or at developing, changing, broadening, whatever.

OK, so I kinda get a buzz out of the fact that so many people are reading Beautiful Monsters. I don’t pretend to understand why anyone (other than me) would be interested in reading my rants, but I’m glad. It gives me the motivation to keep going, and I really appreciate the feedback. I also like the fact that it’s instant publication and instant response. And I like the sense of being connected to others in a community. I like catching glimpses of other peoples lives, glimpses of a particular person at a particular moment in time.

So, that’s me. But what are you doing here? How did you find my blog? Why do you keep reading? Seriously. I don’t mean to be nosy… well, actually, ok, I’m just being nosy. But it would be interesting to find out what people enjoy about Beautiful Monsters, and what puts people off. Not that I’ll necessarily change anything, but I might, if a suggestion grabs me. So what do you like reading? The non-fiction? The poetry? The fiction? The diary entries? Which bits bore you to tears? What kind of writing do you want more of? Do you want shorter blogs? Do you want me to shut up?! Be honest. Be brutal. Say something interesting. Answers on the back of an envelope (preferably filled with chocolate) in the comments section or via email.

The Psychology of Blogging

This guy reckons that blogging is essentially no different to newsgroups or discussion forums or mailing lists or other forms of online conversation. But I disagree. Because blogging isn’t really about community, or conversation. It’s about ME. It’s my writing about my thoughts and my ideas and my experiences. Ok, so other people read my blog, but most of the time the communication is one way – from me to everyone who wants to listen. It’s far more self-centred than newsgroups and mailing lists. And I kind of like that. I mean sure, I’ve had some great times in Usenet. But I like being able to get my thoughts straight and get them out, without having to worry about anyone else having time to speak.

He also says that blogging isn’t much different from personal websites. But it is! Because a website, you just put all this stuff about yourself, and then you leave it, and it sits there gathering dust until you forget you ever had a website. But a blog! It changes all the time. You never know what it’s going to be about tomorrow.

The same psychologist goes on to say that, “ultimately, all blogs die… nearly everything once good becomes worn and replaced by something or someone else. When a particular weblog no longer fulfils [its] mission – whether through intentional neglect, a lack of quality links or commentary, or its readership moving on to the “Next New Thing” – people will start to tune out… Online journals also lose peoples’ interest when the person’s life itself is no longer very interesting or of any interest to the readership. Even the best books and stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A lot of authors don’t realize this and continue the story long after the interesting part of it is over. The climax has passed, the readers move on, but the author still toils because nobody told her the story has ended. After all, when it’s a person’s life, and it’s still continuing, how can it have ended? That’s the paradox that most journalers don’t resolve very well.”

Oh dear. How depressing. Someone tell me if I’ve already died and I haven’t noticed.

I thought the essay Rebecca wrote about blogging was much more interesting than that psych dude's ramblings.

Posted by Fionnaigh at June 7, 2003 10:31 PM