I’m beginning to think that writing a blog is more like writing a letter than writing a dairy. When snail mail was our only option I was a champion letter writer. Sunday afternoons at boarding school were spent with 30 other girls in the prep room writing letters home. I wrote volumes to my parents and another library to my grandmother. My days with their hassles, angst and hopes were poured onto paper. I was working out my adolescent self in a more public arena than my diary. Because the letters were directed to others I was more conscious of how I revealed myself and chose my subject matter carefully.
The act of writing a blog entry feels similar to writing a personal letter because I know that it will be read by others. The experience of confession and creative expression in blogging is similar to that in diary writing but because it is a self conscious performance it feels like letter writing too. I am writing myself into existence for others’ eyes and responses.
However, a blog is more than a diary and more than a letter. It is a new genre altogether based on a radically different technology. A blog invites interactivity and builds a community of readers. Readers unknown to the blog creator are attracted by tags that label the subject matter in a post. Friends and colleagues can be invited to keep up with the latest activities and as a team can cooperate in building a blog.
My children, now adult and living in other cities, communicate with me daily not weekly. Pleas for help, money and understanding come by email, SMS and mobile phone. My response is (almost) immediate and their use of these means is nowhere near as confessional or reflective as the product of my hours in the prep room.
4 comments:
Readers of blogs are not necessarily still practiced in the art of writing. Letters home may be the last writing of any length and personal thought they have done - the tertiary education system for those doing specific voational education leads to report writing on facts and deduced opinions, and professional writing is even balder. Unless there is a yearning to continue writing with imagination and colour, the art of expression in writing can come to a grinding halt. How many accountants out there have a blog revealing their personal views, reading, activities, feelings and opinions beyond their professional life?
Not many accountants and not a whole lot more vets!!
also - wonder how many people write personal letters these days? Can't remember the last one I wrote and I don't think Hat has ever written one. It's all grabs in SMS and email. No long involved descriptions and gripes, no sustained recollection of people and places... sad that the children of our children will have no material evidence of their parents' thoughts and impressions.
Some of our childrn have taken up (at last...) the art of writing a thankyou letter - but not the bland "thankyou for a lovely whatsit its what I always wanted" but heartfelt thankyous. These include Fathers Day etc cards as thankyou for just being father.
But a long involved letter - never to be seen...
However - there are a million more photos of this generation - their children will assume they had a completely happy smiling well fed childhood full of Christmases!
Post a Comment