I'm just wondering how many paid up members maintain regular 'blogs' - let's call them open diaries, and assume they're online?

Something I've come to understand about myself is an overwhelming need to exorcise my frustration at the world at large through a series of pleonasmic rants. In the past, this has been in the form of forum trolling. Basically seeking a sensitive subject, and delivering a literary assault on anyone foolish enough to have an opinion.

I've since matured at least enough to use my open diary to squeeze all the anger I can muster at daily life into one place. Without the time pressure of havng to get my point across before the toic is lost under the weight of however many forum posts get in before I'm done, I'm allowed considerably more time to construct whatever it is I want to say into a form in which I would like to say it. Although I should stress this isn't always the method I use to make diary entries.

The point is, after serving up a sizeable portion of discontent and self-loating, I'm now writing much more than I have been over the last year (which, beyond the diary, wasn't really much at all). And while my scribblings are still what I would term schoolboy, throwaway crap, I'm always at my happiest when I can write.

The increase in self-understanding resultant from allowing myself complete freedom to get my thoughts out into the open, I believe, has been an aid to my overall writing technique. Hence the question.

So do you?

The answer is a no, then?

I don't. I've only got so many words in me and I don't want to waste them telling people what I put on my cornflakes in the morning.

IB, I'm posting this here because it seems slightly appropriate, you don’t have access to what’s being discussed in the Lounge, and apparently don’t intend to upgrade to full membership again.

I've always had a huge respect for you as a writer, but now it’s been overshadowed by the post on your website. You’ve been welcomed back to WW on more than one occasion, despite kicking us in the teeth, so I have to wonder why you keep coming back. And I do wonder why, if you think we’re such idiots, you’ve posted a piece of your writing for feedback from us?

I am mildly amused to see that the majority of my presence is going either unnoticed, or ignored. Apparently, I am not the only one to hold a grudge

No, not holding a grudge – you're just not that important – we’re bored with you. And I really hate the fact that I need to say that because, at base, you're a shit-hot writer. You know that. I know that. A lot of us know that. But, if you keep coming on WW, you just have to stop pissing on those of us who think that. There are many writers on here who would appreciate your skills and your humour. But, if you can't see that, then bugger off and vent your tantrums elsewhere.

Dee

Unnoticed, I suspect - I hadn't noticed your presence until I browsed the threads, where people seem to have been interacting with you ungrudgingly.

And to blogging ... I did run a blog, but didn't use it to reveal my life or opinions. I constructed a character and had a blast with her (coincidentally, I'm just in the process of turning the resulting text into a novel, so it proved very useful). What I loved about blogging was the freedom to write uncensored, unstructured, fast and furious, and it's probably no coincidence that character is, I know, my most vivid to date. Strangely though, she was very angry ...

Andrea

While my presence is perhaps a point for discussion, this is not the place for it. I simply raised a point regarding blogging, curious as to your thoughts. If my blog upsets you, don't read it - a message I have conveyed to more than one person. It's just steam.

As to why I've returned here despite a slight dislike for some of the membership (despite this not being the place to discuss it). On occasion I ask myself a question of my writing. "Would I have put this on WW?". Why do I ask myself this? Because there was a time when I felt that such offerings required of me a certain degree of quality which is not always inherent in my writing. Perhaps that implies a level of respect for the membership, regardless of whatever I may say in my blog. I'm not out to upset anyone. Comments in my blog are there to remind myself that I still have my demons, not to slyly offend people from other websites, which would be foolish given that I allowed you al to link to it.

If I'm not welcome given those comments, I will leave. I'm done with deliberately rocking the boat.

I gave you my thoughts, seeing as you were curious for thoughts, on my experience of blogging. They seem to have gone unnoticed. Now I feel all begrudged.

Your post did, by the way, set me wondering if keeping a diary (although being excessively private I'd not make it an open one) would help me produce more quality writing. I suspect it would, so I'll try it.

Andrea

Apologies Andrea, I meant no offence. My comments were directed at Dee (and those who reflect her opinion).

Regarding your original post (and the astute - or those still hovering over my profile - will note that I'm already breaking a promise made very recently to myself by addressing this, in order to avoid further reproach from the membership), my own blog is at time a charicature (sp?) of myself. I've considered several times creating a breakaway blog that was almost entirely someone else.

Did you consider the possibility that your character was angry because it was, in part, a reflection of some of your own nature? Or did you deliberatly create something that was pointedly not like yourself at all? The freedom of expression, I find, often allows me to tap into a lot of my repressed feelings, the stuff we all bottle up day to day telling ourselves we're bigger than it and that we won't let it bother us. That's why it's such great therapy for me, but rarely makes for pleasant reading for anyone else (that also leads to the question of why I insist on keeping it public, and even advertising it, but still...).

Please don't feel begrudged, it wasn't my intention to ignore you.

None taken

Did you consider the possibility that your character was angry because it was, in part, a reflection of some of your own nature? Or did you deliberatly create something that was pointedly not like yourself at all?

I don't think I created Julia to express my own anger, but I have realised she expressed something else about me ...

When I created the character, I loathed and laughed at her, she was diametrically opposed to me, personally and politically. In real life, I'm extremely careful of others' feelings, sometimes in a way that is confining to me. Julia is energetically disinterested in others' feelings and ethical concerns (my MC, currently in the Archive under Green & Pleasant, if you're interested to see what I mean).

Although at the time I didn't see it, it's pretty obvious now that it was a blast to let the inner bitch come out to play (but I do have to state here that Julia's targets are not my targets. Genuinely) and obviously that says something about what I repress. One thing I have come to like about Julia is that she doesn't pretend to be nicer than she actually is, and that's a rare quality. Not many of us are that brave.

I wonder by the way if any of us truly create characters that are entirely unlike ourselves, even if we like to think they are? I doubt we could. So Julia and I must have a meeting point - I suspect it's in our impatience with the mundane that obscures and slows life down.

So yeah, despite the fact that Julia was a created character, I have found her personally illuminating, more so because of the freedom of a blog - if I'd created her for a novel, I'd have been thinking 'craft' rather than just what entertained me.

So if you created a breakaway character blog, I'm curious - would that be a character very unlike yourself?

Andrea

I once referred to blogs as 'pointless', but I retract that comment now, even though blogs don't interest me in the slightest. I mean, they just don't, sorry. But any kind of daily writing has to be good exercise for the art, and I can appreciate that some shared experience - especially within the industry - can be very useful to certain people.

I'm with smudger here though. I only contain a certain amount of words, that I want to save for my fiction. WW is my one indulgence. And don't get me started on MSN messenger. That's just words into a hole.

JB

<Added>

IB - I was just reading your comments on your website about WW, and was curious to see how you think that members here don't care about making their work as good as possible but as marketable as possible. I'm sorry, but when you're approaching anything professionally - from fixing drains to making movies - I'm afraid that the two things go hand in hand, and there is absolutely no shame in ambition, or wanting to make money from something you love. Your argument is self-defeating there, old chum.

You may be right. Sometimes I just feel (and forgive the rather self-gratifying tone) like an artist in a room with a bunch of businessmen. I don't want to sound arrogant, and maybe I'm the one who has it all the wrong way around, but I've always approached it from the perspective that writing is its own reward, while a number of members seem to be writing with the explicit intention of making money.

I'm aware that if I applied myself to it, I could potentially make money from it as well (again, don't take that too arrogantly), but I feel that in order to achieve this, I would have to compromise between what I want to write, and what publishers want written. I enjoy an audience for my writing, but would I expect them to pay for the opportunity? And should I expect to be paid to entertain people when I choose to do it in my own time because I enjoy it?

But of course, I probably sound like a student photographer, taking pictures for the simple joy of capturing beauty, and railing against the atrocity of the mercenary photographers that do much less inspired work for cash (not that I'm at all implying that other people's work is less inspired than mine - the opposite is much more likely to be true).

On the point made repeatedly now that 'there are only so many words in you', I should note that I have found that writing regularly is like pumping iron. If you lift regularly, it gets easier and, over time, you can lift more.

'there are only so many words in you'

Yes, that's not correct. What I mean, of course, is 'there are only so many throwaway words in me, and I prefer to commit my thoughts and writing to a medium that will stick'. Blogs are transitory, as are chat rooms and messenger services. They annoy me personally because I see them as a waste of the artistic commodity which I employ - what I mean by 'words into a hole'. I practise by writing my stories, and that, for me, is enough.

I get your point about 'an artist in a room full of businessmen'. I'm sure lots of successful writers still feel like that. There was an excellent panel at the British Fantasy Convention that touched on that very thing - art vs. business. But I think (and this applies to me personally) that if you are serious about getting work out there - to be read, and enjoyed, and maybe to even shake thinsg up a little - then you have to strike the happy medium.

('Wowee, brilliant, I've made contact with Elvis, isn't that peachy?'... WALLOP)

I think it is possible to love what you do, do it because it pleases you, and also keep a cold eye on commercial concerns. For me, I don't see taking money for my art as selling out. I have a talent, and the alternative is sitting in an office being bored out of my mind for the next thirty years, when I could be making worlds.

JB

Ah, but I'll be sat in an office bored out of my mind for the next thrity years, anyway!

As with all writing there are good blogs (few) and bad blogs (many).

Someone pointed me at this blog recently in which "Geoffrey Chaucer" comments on various things, including interviewing Paris Hilton, becoming a Pirate, and recapping the plot of Snakes On A Plane.

If you have a taste for mediaeval English, it's damn funny.

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2006/06/shes-yonge-shes-sexie-shes-riche.html
http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2006/07/pyrates-lyf-for-chaucer.html
http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/2006/08/serpentes-on-shippe-spoylerez.html

I'm not going to enter the "writing for money = selling out" argument.

I don't believe anyone writes purely for money, whatever they say if they don't want to look too arty and high-falutin'. There are far, far easier ways of earning much more money, much more reliably.

We write to be read - to make contact - to be heard. But it's next-to-impossible to get your words read by more than a handful of your nearest and dearest. If you want that to happen, at some point you have to write something that someone thinks will make them money if they market and distribute your work: the magazine editor has to think people will want to buy an issue with your story in it, the publisher has to think that the big buyers will stock it, the self-publisher has to sell enough to bookshops to cover their costs. It's true that there's now the Net, but even doing that costs something, which has to be paid for by you in cash or time, or by visitors to it, or by advertisers looking for the visitors to it.

I don't think trying to write something that people want to read is a dishonourable thing to do. What would be the point in writing something no one wanted to read? Well, there's lots of point, but it's like singing on an empty mountain top: therapy, not communication. So, at some point, you have to write something that people want. A market is a place where you take the things you make, and hope enough people will want them to keep you fed and housed and making more.

Now it's true that the economics of book publishing mean that relatively few people have the power and cash to keep a novelist fed and housed and making more. Their view of what people want - a book's marketability - can't help but dominate quite a lot of writers' conversations.

As far as the nature of discussions on WW goes, many - I'd say possibly most - writers aren't comfortable with discussing the real inner springs of their work. Either we don't understand them, or we protect them fiercely from scrutiny. It's much easier to discuss word-counts and genres. We certainly don't offer our writing mainsprings up on the forums for dissection by any old passing member. So it doesn't really work to judge WW or any group of writers by the equivalent of what gets wittered on about in the bar. The real stuff goes on alone, in a quiet room, and is then offered - nervously - to a small and trusted group for their considered opinion.

Emma