It’s tough being a blog.
What you start out as is never what you grow up to be. Writing was the theme of Spinning back in 2003, but personal journaling became a part of it as both an exercise in writing story and in telling all a bit about the writer. Caught up several times in rants and ravings, it tried to set itself back on the track and added literature reviews that came in an unprofessional but more of a writer’s viewpoint. But the personal cannot help but creep back in.
Having lost all but a couple of the inner sanctum of those who know the writer in all her barest flaws and foibles, I’m talking without so much as earrings on nor rings, the need to talk became instead the need to write. Lost readers who either didn’t like the lit or current course reviews, or those who slowly snuck away in fear from the often dark swinging of the mood.
Hooking up with communities such as the great Metaxucafe is a mixed blessing. Too often the headlines grabbed from Spinning turn out to be the idiotic ravings of a madwoman obsessing about her winter sand battles with the snowplows. Too many posts per day and often the good ones are lost offscreen within an hour or two–and face it, how many read the archives?
The latest happy revelation is a mention here on Canopic Jar, an online literary journal that I’ve followed for a couple years. Good grief, the link may bring their readers directly into the current legal battles here recorded; all I can do is weakly smile and offer a Sorry, folks, and read something really fast and add some posts to top the page. (I will, I will, I will submit a story as they suggest.)
So a weblog needs to assert itself perhaps in some direction or another. Or else it simply needs to be itself.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology