111 thoughts about writing

I’ve been trying to think of a new title for this blog. Craig gave me a stack of books for Christmas about writing, through which I have been casually browsing, and one hint that jumped out at me was that if you want to write, you need to respect your writing. Somehow “bigblogdork.com” seems to fall short of this requirement.

When I first started posting entries, I tried to come up with a line from a Wilco song that would work (since Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics speak to my soul), like “Shot in the arm” (taken, though I did use it as a subtitle) or “Hummingbird” (taken) or “Blue eyed soul” or “My blue eyed soul” (both taken). Then I was thinking of something like an “Adventures of…” title, but you should see the list of mom’s blog titles that begin with this phrase. Plus, I don’t really have a whole lot of adventures to chronicle in the Indiana Jones sense of the word, so such a title could be misleading.

Next, my marketing brain kicked in and I noticed that if you just search for a directory of women’s blogs, there are so many pages of titles that I can’t imagine anyone browsing through more than a couple of them. Of course, the pages are in alpha order, so the first few pages of any directory are blogs that begin with numbers. Just in case I ever want to drive traffic to my blog from a directory, I need a name that starts with “111…”(“111dalmations”? “111waystoavoidhousekeeping”?).

Upon reflection, I realized that my marketing professors at business school would be disappointed by of the lack of sophistication and robustness in my plan. Hence, my current approach is to come up with a title that reflects the content of the blog in a way that conveys a benefit to a particular target market, and then leverage the power of networking to drive traffic from other blogs with similar sensibilities. (Phew- good to know I can still bust out some business-ese if I need to.) I’ll treat it like it’s Amazon or MySpace. If that approach doesn’t demonstrate serious respect for my writing, I don’t know what does. Now I just need to figure out who my target market is (suburban moms who are a little bit dorky and enjoy listening to Wilco?), come up with a name that they would like, and find a bunch of other blogs that these folks also like that I can link to from my own.

Why, you may ask, do I care how many people read this? I have two answers: feedback and anonymity. I currently have three loyal readers, all of whom I know and love (you know who you are – love you! -- and you are not dorky but very cool) and who give me great specific and complimentary feedback on my writing. These three readers already know a lot, if not all, of the context, so the self-referential nature of my writing doesn’t bother or confuse them as much as it might somebody who doesn’t know me. Plus, they don’t want to hurt my feelings by telling me that my writing is dumb. I want to see if I can connect to a complete stranger with my writing. If not, back to the drawing board. I could probably convince other people whom I know, but not as well, to at least give this a gander, but I’m not quite ready for the level of criticism, judgment, and self-censorship that would entail. I don’t really need the other moms at my kids’ school to know what I think about on a snow day or how I spent some of my high school years.

Hmm, maybe “Anonymousmom.com”? It rhymes. Or “Don’ttrytoguesswhoIam.com”? More descriptive but a little too long. Or “Sendmesomelove.com”? I realize that none of these convey any benefit to the reader. “Readthisandbehappy.com”? That’s not really accurate, though. Some of my stuff is pretty Debbie Downer-ish.

The question of anonymity is one that I’ve been struggling with lately as I try to find my muse for fiction writing. I’ve steered away from the thinly veiled autobiography idea. I’m not quite ready to go there – too many of the key players would figure out who they are, plus I need to be a better writer before I can wring some entertainment value and meaning out of my own life. But, every other idea that I’ve had has its roots in real, living people and their stories, some of whom are people I know well, and some of whom just have great stories. I can’t get past the idea that using other people’s real conflicts and struggles is exploitation, and that if by some remote possibility something that I write might actually be shared or even published someday, somebody will recognize a story as theirs, at least in part, and it might cause some pain. But what if changing the story too much dilutes the essential truth of it? Ugh. I think I need to shut my brain up and just try writing one.

I need to remind myself that the cure for cancer or world hunger is not riding on the order in which I manage to put some words and punctuation. Not to diminish the power of writing – words can hurt people, even if only aesthetically (“it’s so terrible – it burns my eyes!”) and I do need to treat it with respect – but I can’t let the impossibly high standards that have been set by all of the artists whose work I admire overwhelm me. I really do enjoy the writing I’ve been doing – the process if not always the result -- and I’d like to try to take it to the next level of craft and, dare I say, artistry. But I need to give myself some room to take some risks and really screw up without taking it all too seriously. In fact, this seems like an advisable strategy to adopt with any hobby, passion, artistic endeavor, or, indeed, with life: Proceed deliberately with an eye towards the masters of the craft, but don’t expect perfection and be sure to have some fun.

That’s my new motto. Off to write a Pulitzer-prize winning story, now (or at least one with a main character and a conflict)…