On Blogging

A young lady, daughter of a friend, wrote asking for advice on writing her first book. She had lots of journals, snippets of ideas, and didn't know if that would be enough to "make her a real writer". She said she had a blog, but "no one reads those; blogging is dead."

I had to tell her that anyone in this day and age who still writes in an old journal is indeed a writer. And that blogging was indeed not dead.

I look at the collection of my journals, gathered over the years. Just a few short years that stretched into twenty. So much can happen in that time. I started this blog in 2008. 2,289 posts ago. So much has happened in that time.

A well-tended grave, in a military cemetery surrounded by flags. One wooden box, bearing in cold air a warmth that can't be replaced, a well-loved dog toy resting on its lid. Two other small boxes on each side of it, one with a collar on top, another with a well-chewed yellow tennis ball. Some dried flowers from a wedding bouquet, placed between the leaves of a book of poetry.

On each page are short, simple words that do not begin to carry the weight or the sharpness of their past. But with time, those short flurries of words became long tales that are born from a soul that's an irrepressible retailer of words, a shopkeeper of phrase, an enabler of intent.

Book #1 was born out of a few blog posts and lots of journal entries that became chapters, then another, and another. It was born out of an internationally known author's belief that I was an author at heart and her encouragement to find my writer's voice. As I realized I am a writer and my world has too many words to be otherwise. 

I sit here now, no music playing, no noise---just the soft breathing of a rescue dog and my thoughts, words almost imperceptible to the senses, hanging in the air to be plucked by my fingers and laid upon this wooden desk. This computer is my accomplice, guarding me with its quiet accord, bearing with me the seclusion, the mystery. I should get up and do some chores before it gets dark, but while the words are still within reach, I am imprisoned by the very freedom of my hands.

I think of the classic writers - would Jane Austin have been a hit on Pinterest? Would Hemingway have been popular on Instagram? How many Twitters to win a Pulitzer Prize? Probably not, but I bet they had journals, too.

Creativity can be short bursts of color, forms, and words.

But not in the world that I like to live in.

Because I am a writer and I have too many words.

I am the run-on sentence. I am the "too many commas". I can't take a morning standing out among broken trees, red and blue lights flashing as words pass over the forest floor like the sound of big guns, and make it a quip. I can't look out upon the hills, the top of one wreathed in billowing smoke, as around me there are shouts and hollers, ringing out like war cries, yet spoken in hushed tones so as not to disturb the dead, and express it with a hashtag.

For words are my truth, immense, and they are my voice.

Those words are strings of thoughts that you would have to travel far ahead not to hear, before you outrun the reach of a voice. You can turn off your modem, but the words still exist. For they are my words, and though confined to a virtual reality, they are words that exist, in my head and my heart, their tone from the stillness and gloom of a life with a past where my words were my one truth in each passing day.

You can choose to turn away or turn off and not read. You can give me a 1-star review because the "author of this (biography) just talks about herself" (yes, seriously), but it doesn't mean I won't write. For I am a writer, and that is what we do, sharing the nature of that internal silence that follows us down into the depths of our soul and brings up a bucket from a well---one brimming with words that spill over, to quench the thirsty hearts of whispering men

I am a writer---that solitary person who stood in the corner of the schoolyard and just looked on at the popular kids. But I always had the words, even when I was too solitary to say them. The first journal was a way to capture in words,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

It is what it is, a way to capture in words on a screen instead of a page, pages that can be held close in or telegraphed to the world. It can be whimsy, it can be fun, it can be as disturbed as the mind behind it, or as calm as someone one can stare at in wonder, words that reach out like a consoling whisper. It can be as intimate as a kiss or as impersonal as the wind.

It can simply be a piece of bacon and a smile.

Blogging is not dead.

It is alive when the muse fails, and the hands stay still in the air with honest idiocy of objective, which made their fruitlessness both profound and poignant. It is alive when the fingers dance over the keyboard in a frenzy, grappling with ghosts in one final act of common courage.

It is alive when the keyboard is silent, and the house is still, and the one you treasure more than anything on earth looks up from the smartphone that you will never own and says, "I love what you just wrote".

It is alive because here my voice has no word count; it can be black-and-white or filled with color. It will be stories of battles fought and won, of great mysteries, and simple pleasures. It will be warnings that the younger self will not grasp until the older self breathes its last. It will be joys and sad caresses, tender words laid out upon the tongue like a wafer, a benediction, a blessing, a self-communion of one formed of two hands. If you do not read, I will still write, as I do not write, so you can claim some part of me. But if you come out from beneath that place---that conception of existence we hide under like a tortoise in his shell and listen---the words will draw breath, even after I am gone.

Blogging is not dead.

It breathes as long as I do. Whether you read or even comment,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

- Brigid