I just spent some time looking through posts from last year. And was... a little embarrassed. Not by how bad they were, but by how much less bad they were then than they are now. There were more of them. They were better written.
I do keep this blog for myself. I keep it as a record of my life, of my kids' growing up, of the little things that I know I would otherwise forget. I also keep it as a way of staying in touch with friends, because I am, with very few exceptions, lousy at staying in touch. This way, Grandma E and my sisters-in-law and the friends who are interested can all know the cute things the kids are doing, without my having to email them each individually--which I would never manage to do.
But I also keep it because, as a professional writer who writes almost exclusively as someone else, I want to have a way to write in my own voice. I want to be able to remember what my writing, my own writing, my own voice, sounds like. Lately, my own writing hasn't sounded that great. And it isn't surprising that I'm down to fewer than twenty regular readers. And I can't help but think, is this my writing now? Is this my voice? Do I even have my own voice anymore, or has it morphed into the voices of various men old enough to be my father?
I know that most of it is that I don't have a lot of time. Any time I spend blogging is time stolen from speeches, from housework, from the kids, or, most likely, from sleep. But, to use a quote one of my clients likes, anything worth doing is worth doing well.
I'll try to do better.
5 comments:
Uberimma, I think you are doing just fine.
You are writing in your own voice. The fact that you're aware of the need to use it shows that you *are* doing just fine. If you were unaware...if you never thought about your writing...you wouldn't be going through old entries. I love reading your blog as much as today as I did the first time I stumbled across it. I don't check it as frequently, but I check a lot of blogs less frequently - strange year. Yours, I always come back to. Your humor, your insight, the lists - I love the lists. Thank you, for blogging. :)
But the twenty of us really like it! :)
Well, I'm sure we'll like whatever you write next too.
FWIW, I would wonder whether the drop in readership had more to do with going password-protected for a while than anything else.
Life is certainly busier now for you--cut yourself some slack. Fewer posts indicate energy going elsewhere, which is really what you want, right? Those boys prefer you now rather than copious notes later.
I keep my blog as a journal more than anything, too. You're one of the few who read it, and I'm sure you've noticed that sometimes they're little essays, and sometimes they're just lists of events, connected by transitional phrases. I usually struggle to post once a week, b/c my mom checks it too and I know I'm going to wonder what I did all year. And, the last few months, I've been doing less reading on the web, and more in textbooks, which is why I'm only just reading this entry.
Don't worry. You have 3 kids now, and one on the way. You didn't have that when you started the blog. You have a home of your own and big hopes for the future. You are working and looking after your family and still hanging on to yourself when you can, with this blog and with the little knitting you get to do.
If you had lost your voice, I don't think you'd still be writing.
Post a Comment