I don't fancy myself a Novel Writer. In fact, as much as I enjoy writing, even the idea of writing something as long and involved as a Novel bores me to tears. So, my heart goes out to those of you participating in "NaNoWriMo":http://www.nanowrimo.org/ this year, but it's just not for me.
However, I do enjoy writing poetry, short stories, essays, and personal notes and am rarely known for having a lack of words. So, I've decided (a day late) to perform autonablophlebotomy on a daily basis in participation of what is certainly the silliest named National anything ever: "NaBloPoMo":http://www.fussy.org/nablopomo.html. I'll make up for yesterday's missing post by posting twice one day this month.
I'm putting an added restriction on myself for this exercise. The topic of this blog has always been all over the place: politics, news, technology, sex, photography, sexuality, weblinks, nudity, meme city, debauchery, personal notes, sexual advances, poetry, boobies, and depressing cryptic entries about my life in its various states. Over the course of this month, however, I'm restricting myself from using making purely technical or political entries, will be avoiding memes and surveys, and will not post weblinks without copious amounts of personal commentary to go along with it. Basically, every entry will be personal, even if it touches on technical or political themes. Of course, I may make more than one post on some days in order to overcome this restriction.
And what a better topic to start a solid month of public writing off with than the topic of public writing itself.
I haven't been writing publicly much lately. If any of you noticed, you were very kind to let me enjoy my unannounced and unintended hiatus in peace. It's given me a lot of time to think about why I write publicly in the first place.
Sometimes I write because I think those that read what I've written will find personal gain through it. Maybe I'm writing about the best way to wash your cat, the great book that I read and feel you should read too, or the terrible product I recently purchased. Maybe I'm offering a tutorial on how to do something or suggesting better ways to go about a common task. In these cases, the only benefit I get from writing it down is that I can refer to it later in the event that I forget something I once knew. Since I have no advertisements on my site, and have received exactly $0 to date in donations from my writing, making this public brings me no benefit. The reason for doing so is purely the satisfaction of having done a good deed.
Other times I write in order to figure something out. The sheer act of being forced to make sense out of something enough to put it in writing brings clarity that I wouldn't otherwise have. Rereading what I've written causes me to see things in myself and in my situation that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Making these writings public serves to offer readers insight into the life of another person which may help those readers to learn something about themselves. If a reader chooses to make an observation about me based on this writing, then I gain insight into myself, that person, and humanity as a whole through that observation and it is a truly rewarding experience. If no observations are offered to me, then I receive no benefit.
Other times I write because I'm directly seeking help, advice, pointers, suggestions, and observations. These are often personal in nature but can range from "what color looks best on me?" to "do you think I should sleep with this chick that has scabies but is really, really hot?". When responses are produced, this information is often very useful. Additionally, other readers with the same question may find an answer for themselves in your answers. Without responses from readers, this writing serves no purpose to me or my readers.
Other times I write to share something beautiful. Maybe it's a poem, a photograph, or a short story. While criticism is certainly appreciated, it is not expected. The only benefit I receive is the satisfaction of having shared.
If you take all these reasons for writing and boil them down to their essence, you will see only two reasons remain: I write publicly because I want to share or because I desire feedback. Sometimes both. This brings me to the point of today's rambling.
First of all, If I'm writing because I desire feedback, then there's no point in writing to an audience that tends to not provide feedback. In fact, doing so is downright futile. So if I'm not getting feedback from pieces intended to solicit feedback then I either need to write something else or write to some other audience.
Furthermore, sharing for sharing's sake isn't really all that fun or interesting if you don't know that someone — at least one other person — is benefiting from it or enjoying it or learning from it. Without that knowledge, it just feels like a fruitless exercise in futility.
Reader feedback is one way to know that something has been enjoyed. While some people are against the "I love this" and "thanks for sharing" style comments because they offer no useful information to other readers, I enjoy them because they let me know that what I've shared is appreciated enough to cause someone to take a few seconds of their time to tell me so.
When the amount of reader feedback I receive began to drop drastically, I decided to redirect my readers to read my words directly from my website. Whether you came from LiveJournal, Tribe.Net, MySpace, or an RSS feed, you had to visit my site in order to read all of my words. By coming to my site I was able to obtain statistics and glean from that a measure of how well liked a particular piece was. This worked pretty well for a time. Eventually, people complained about having to make that extra click and insisted that they would read and enjoy more of what I had to offer provide more feedback in return if I didn't impose that requirement. So, I switched back. As expected, outside of search engine hits, my website visits dropped to an all time low and, as I expected, reader feedback barely increased if it did at all.
If I'm not getting any form of feedback, either through statistics or comments, then I have no way of knowing that others are enjoying what I've shared. And if it's not being enjoyed, it's utterly pointless to continue to do it. I either need to write something else or write to come other audience.
So, I either need a new reason for writing, a new audience to write to, or something different to write. NaBloPoMo couldn't have come at a better time. I intend to use this month as an opportunity to explore new topics, expand on older topics, and experiment with new methods of obtaining user feedback and new styles of obtaining statistics from my writing.
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