You may never have never taken much time to determine exactly why you’re blogging. After all, if what you want is to socially network with people, wouldn’t you be better served with a web camera, a light source, and your friends list? Mmm, maybe, but blogging has the potential to be more than a kaffeklatsch with old friends.

My personal observation of why we write on the internet is that we do it for one of two reasons:

1. You have something to say, and writing is ‘your’ medium.

2. You want to be “popular,” get big hit counts, and land a paying gig.

I have no problem with the second reason for writing. The cynical drive for hit counts, in aid of our writing becoming an income stream, is no more nefarious than juggling to earn a living as a circus performer. It may be that our other, greater and more varied, talents aren’t developed by the limits we’ve imposed on ourselves, but it certainly isn’t a moral wrong. And frankly, it’s nobody’s business how we decide to legally use our gifts, skills, and talents.

Most people on the internet are using their writing skill as a way to socialize, and that’s a darned good use of writing skills. We can connect with a lot of varied people and ideas, and grow from those connections. We can form social groups with our writing, using blog comments as mini forums for those whose interests line up with our blog’s theme and personality.

We can, each of us through our blogs, become a neighborhood pub or park, where like-minded people gather to freely discuss everything under the sun. And isn’t that what human beings have always done? From the ancient agora, through quilting bees and barn raisings, to the internet, we gather in groups and form social relationships. All humans are born with the need to be a functioning member of a group. Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

Despite the detracting propagandists who promote the agenda of pharmaceutical companies (more depressed people=more profits), Maslow’s hierarchy is born out by even the shortest perusal of human history: humans like to hang out with other humans, and more positive human interaction leads to more human satisfaction.

Now, I know there are those who decry the amount of time spent relating to “flesh and blood human beings” that we lose by being on the internet. Maybe. I can see the argument that we’ve become atomized. Still, the drive for human interaction seems to me to be alive and flourishing on the internet. And blog comments are one place where you can see that. They’re simply another way to communicate, a good way, in fact.

I question how many of us, who do communicate with our fellow man via the internet, would actually be hanging over the back fence gabbing with our neighbors, if we weren’t on the internet. You see, on the internet we get to CHOOSE our neighbors. In real life, not so much.

Blogging as social networking has liberated anyone within reach of an internet connection from the stultifying limitations of natal-tribe conformity. By that liberation we become citizens of the world. By that global citizenship we can intellectually grow light-years away from the circumstances of our birth and physical location. By that intellectual growth we can become fully and honestly who we are.

I see a personal blog as a way to attract to ourselves the kind people we like to hang out with, in other words, a way to form ourselves into leaders and members of tribes relevant to who and what we are. If we’re able to parlay that into a paid gig, then that’s gravy, isn’t it?

However——-

If you’re a budding Hemingway, and you know that, if you want your writing to take you in that direction, then consider whether your talent and writing skills might be better nurtured by turning off the hit counters and blog commenting, on at least one of your blogs. Making the focus of your writing the gaining of public popularity is not conducive to the maturation of writing skills, nor does it promote the health of your intellect, which is needed to put those writing skills to the most effective use.

If Hemingway and Fitzgerald were alive today they’d back me up on that. They both had experience in directing their writings to a particular readership. Hemingway escaped that limitation by getting out of the newspaper biz. Fitzgerald was tormented to his dying day by the thought that he could have done so much more, and done it better, had he not had to sell out his writing skills to support a high maintenance lifestyle.

Now that I’ve praised Hemingway and Fitzgerald, let me point out that Hemingway committed suicide, and Fitzgerald drank himself to death. If you’re actually a writer, not just in public opinion, but in your talent, skill and drive to write, you need to guard your abilities, not squander them on the kind of internet “popularity” that leads to nothing more satisfying to your soul than paid blog gigs.

The internet, like any other popular medium, can cage you within its ego stroking. Your ego is a very small part of who you are. Oh, it’s a loud part! But, unless you can train it to serve you, instead of letting it lead you down a lifetime of of blind alleys, you’re never going to write anything that will provide it with lasting peace. For a writer, that peace comes from only one place: knowing that what you wrote changed a mind and a life in a positive and lasting way.

Whether you write humor, science, social commentary, science fiction, political opinions, or any of a number of other things, aren’t you hoping that what you write will resonate with your readers so that they see the world in a new way? Aren’t you trying to provide more than a brief titillation to your readers? Isn’t your ego so big that it would like to know that students fifty years from now will find that your words apply to their lives? Isn’t that the satisfaction you seek? If your hero is someone like Hemingway, instead of someone like Jeff Bezos, your answer is, “Yes.”

Had Fitzgerald made the decision to pursue writing, instead of pursuing rented villas in France and a public image as a “bright young thing,” he’d have been satisfied enough with himself NOT to try to drink away the pain of a self-esteem he lost early, in his quest of a shallow life. You see, it isn’t that Fitzgerald’s work didn’t live on. It’s that he doubted it would, because he knew what he’d done wasn’t the best he could do. His ego knew that, and it wasn’t satisfied.

Fitzgerald’s best work was never written. And I, just one among many, grieve that loss, for the same purely selfish reason as the many grieve it: we know that our lives, changed and improved by his writings, could have been made better still, had he written the best he had inside him.

I’ve read zillions of comments on the writing abilities of this or that blog owner. The comments are uniformly of praise and encouragement for those who write anything readable and resonant, even the most unfortunate of twaddle. My immediate thought, when I read such comments, is “Oh dear, I hope that doesn’t encourage the writer to quit his/her day job.” And, yes, I think the same thing when I’m undeservedly praised. Twaddle is twaddle, even if I’m the one who wrote it.

Don’t judge your work solely by the opinion of the public. Look around you and see what “the public” likes: they like to be stimulated and entertained. If you’re hoping to get a job writing for a sitcom, fire up the hit counter and zero in on the comments. That way you can learn how to come to the attention of the people who make their living off of writers.

If you’re going for the Big Prize, aim for it, right now, and leave the social networking comments behind. You have only the time given to one life to reap any genuine reward for your work, and you and I both know that money alone isn’t enough to qualify as a genuine reward. Can you afford to waste your small amount of alloted time reading blog comments…or pandering to them?

And finally, no matter what your motivation is for blogging, don’t ’settle’ for comments if your blog host makes money off your donated writing. Obviously, the ideal would be to host your own blog, but that means having the money to do so. Until you can afford that, look around the internet for a fair exchange between you and your blog host.

Fitzgerald was well paid by Saturday Evening Post for his stories. The Post attracted readership with his stories, and that readership attracted ad revenue. And ad revenue then meant exactly what it means now: someone (or several someones) got a raise and bonus for being clever enough to ‘own’ the power of Fitztgerald’s writing.

What are you accepting as the currency of exchange for your writing?

March 17, 2009