An introspective look at blogging

As April chugs to its much-anticipating end, I've been asking myself why? Not why as in the meaning of life, though I have had some deep, existential thoughts of late. I mean, why do we blog anyway?

I know I've taken why I've taken up nablopomo (National Blog Post Month for the uninitiated): as a discipline thing. Yes, discipline: that thing that is sadly lack in all areas of my life, especially internet-, money-, sleep- and west-wing-related areas. I thought it would do me good, and it kind of has. I also thought I needed to up my daily word count if I'm ever going to be any good at this writing thing. You can be the judges of whether that's worked, but please be nice.

But why blog in the first place? I mean, why not just write things down in a pretty notebook like people used to in the old days? Come to think of it, like I used to in the old days?

Is it a product of being an external processing extrovert who lives alone and works for herself? Well, yes, that's true for the venting posts. But I don't know if you've noticed, I haven't vented in a while.

Is it general helpfulness to the expat public? Maybe.

Is it so that all my friends back home can follow my, ahem, adventures? Well, if it is, I've failed: most of my readers seem to be in America. (Including Dallas, Pasadena, LA and New York. Some of you will know why those places are exciting. The rest of you can ignore this little aside.)Also, as you've probably noticed, reading this blog will actually tell you very little about my life and how I'm living it, other than that I'm writing a book and that I love the West Wing. Hopefully, anyone who has ever spent five minutes with me will be well aware of both of those things without having to log in to anything.

Is it because I sometimes want other people's opinions, as on my Sarah Palin dilemma? (I've solved it by the way - a sticker that says "my other book is Obama's"... I don't normally deface books, but think I could make an exception with this one.) Welllll, yes, but only if their opinions do not diverge too greatly from my own. As my oboe teacher said yesterday, referring I think to my reed, "she doesn't like to be resisted".

Is it because, as stated elsewhere, I have the fragile ego of an aspiring writer? That it occasionally needs stroking?

Hmmm. I suspect there may be a little more in that one than I'd care to admit. My obsessive checking of statcounter and comments would support this theory. Although I'm always surprised by what people actually do comment on, and it's invariably not the things I hope they do. (All comments gratefully received, though. Really.)

Fellow bloggers, tell me. Why do you do it?

My first award!

I've been struggling with my writing lately. My novel feels two-dimensional and in need of a sub plot. My brilliant, deep, philosophical ideas seem to come out on paper as "he said hi she said here's some French verbs he said okay then they kissed and then it was sad the end".

My blog posts, while I enjoy writing them (and then enjoy spying on my readers - Luton fan, where have you gone?), are also, let's be honest, a little one-dimensional, based as they are mostly around one topic. (I'm resisting the temptation to name names...)

So it was very reassuring, and actually a little big exciting, to be nominated by @peabee72's Sunshine Award for bloggers, particularly as she said she chose us "because I love their use of language, their honesty and the genuine tone that they write with". Those are three of the things that I definitely want my writing to be known for.

So perhaps my writing career is not turning out to be dead on arrival after all... the Brussels Writers' Group were all very kind about my short story the other day too, and then I read somewhere today that apparently the first draft of a novel is all about the bad writing.

So it seems that hope really does seem eternal! Hooray.

I'm nominating @himupnorth's blog, because his impossibly clever satirical poems make me smile... He apparently has two of them (www.blogupnorth.blog.co.uk and www.everyfictiontellsastory.com), so it's just as well I have some nominations going spare.

I'll be adding more as and when inspiration strikes!