Tuesday, 13 April 2010

How do YOU blog?

How do YOU blog? And perhaps more importantly, Why do you blog? I was thinking about my next blog here when I thought instead of writing about today's events I write about how I get to write about today's and any day's events. Me, I've started writing back in 1987, I kind of stumbled into it like I've done most things in my life. It did take my 1 year to learn, learn the hard way to write. I hope that I'm a better writer because of this. Little stories gave way into an attempt to write a book. Sat in front of the gas fire, on an old barn chair with the back cut off I perched a typewriter on a stool and away I went. I ended up with a 235 page novel which I then called "A Nation Of Shopkeepers", which was Napoleon's  contemptous phrase for the English. Until Wellington cut him down to size. A  few years later I decided I wanted more that just one typescript of my "masterpiece" so I bought an Atari 520 and started copytyping it all out, so then I'd have it on a computer and I could make multipul copies. I should add that the noivel doubled in size and I renamed it The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker, I still have those multipul copies scattered around my house, just in case of fire or theft. 10 years ago when I met my Shanghai rose we had to invest in a proper computer and Internet so my wife could talk to her mum in Shanghai. As for me it was a chance to have a website so that my babies were safe in cyberspace. It also gave me a chance to blog. Now IF you compare one of my essays, attached to these blogs, then you can see there is a difference in style. I hope my blogs read as if its a bedtime story, your nan or grandpa is sitting in the chair beside you and he's recounting a funny story that makes you feel secure and happy and lets you drift off to sleep. For me its writing practice, if you don't practice then you forget how to do it. Its also a short form of writing that takes no more that an hour or much less, but it gives you a chance to "preach" to the rest of the world. You can also make friends. I used  to practice my writing on positive thoughts.com and there were lots of nice folks there, one post got 800 views. The  forum has now closed that's why I annoy people on this site instead. But back to my theme, why do we all blog, well its so we can all say "hey listen to me " , "I'm just as good as you", ultimately we  have our own tv/radio station via our blogs. Or perhaps I should say Newspaper, its a chance to share, to boast, to grow together even, to laugh together too. I must say there are some good jokes that do the rounds and I do like them, not to forget the poems and thoughts that are shared. I was once in a bar in County Kerry and the pub was owned by an Irish writer, his book  The Field was made into a film with Richard Harris. Hie neice told me that he wrote because it was "in him". What does that mean? I think I understand because the stories that are "in me" just have to come out. Even if you stop writing and its only as you are picking up litter around the 4star hotel car park that that ideas come back to you, then you can begin to understand what "in me" means. Just as musicians have the music in them, so words are in me and in you all as you blog here and now on this Multiply site. Do you wait for all the story to be ready in your head or do you just start with an idea and wait for the Muse to take you where it wants to go. I enjoy going with the flow, its like closing your eyes when youare on a long journey and when you open your eyes you have arrived at some place totally different, like crossing a border in the night. While I blog my big daughter sometimes sneaks downstairs so she can watch and read as I write something. Or when I finish a new blog I get her to have a read to see if it makes her laugh or whatever. All I can say is that to blog is to share, folks may never bother to open an attachment but at least for the course of the blog I have an audience, even if it could only be an audience of one, and that's my daughter. 

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