tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5785052391761134022.post6638607104051397568..comments2024-03-23T06:00:13.243-04:00Comments on Kristin Berkey-Abbott: Why Write?Kristin Berkey-Abbotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16841824206762029363noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5785052391761134022.post-46896370704988911942014-07-07T16:33:45.663-04:002014-07-07T16:33:45.663-04:00Thanks for picking up this thread where I left off...Thanks for picking up this thread where I left off and continuing to muse about the central issues. As Jim says, I'm hanging in there, pretty sure that the reports of the patient's demise were premature.Bethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15829062955658284450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5785052391761134022.post-36119241693476664892014-07-04T01:33:07.344-04:002014-07-04T01:33:07.344-04:00The age of blogging is dead, eh? So’s the novel ap...The age of blogging is dead, eh? So’s the novel apparently, video killed the radio star and computers brought about the end of the printed page. I never realised people were such doom-mongers. Blogging’s not dead. It wasn’t that long ago people were talking about the end of Facebook predicting a large shift towards Twitter but all that happened is that people found a way to tweet and post on Facebook and still squeeze in the odd blog. I agree that blogging probably isn’t as popular as it once was. Jazz and opera aren’t as popular nowadays but they’re still hanging on in there. I’ve been blogging for almost seven years and it suits me just fine. I’m too long-winded for anything else. Granted my readership has tailed off but I still have a small and loyal following. There are people out there who think a book review deserves more than 200 words and I’m one of them. Which brings me to your opening question: Why write?<br /><br />It depends what I’m writing. I’ve always treated the blogs as a university course. I never went to uni and it’s always bothered me. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent my life studying because I have. Not sure I could sit down and take a degree now but I’d like to think I’ve earned an honorary one. So the blogs and the book reviews are me studying. My daughter passed her degree a few months back and we used to talk about her course—Psychology—but the one thing I was appalled to learn was how short they expected her essays to be. Most were like a thousand words. I’ve written longer sentences! The kind of things they were asking her to write about could barely be summarised in a thousand words. So when I write I use as many words as I feel necessary to say what I have to say. I write for me. If anyone else out there appreciates my work then that’s a bonus.<br /><br />And the same goes for my fiction. I facetiously say I write because I can’t not write and although there’s some truth to that the real reason I write it to work stuff out, stuff that’s too big to hold in my head. The writing could really be discarded after I’ve worked out whatever it is but other people I’ve found, as with the blogs, can benefit from my… let’s call them ‘workings’. So I keep them. I don’t write to tell stories. Never been a storyteller. Never even been one to tell jokes. I never used to think about readers. At least before coming online. Now when I write a part of me can’t help but feel them behind me and to be honest I find them a bit of a nuisance and a distraction. <br /><br />I do have to wonder what I’d end up writing if I tried that exercise of your friend’s. For a writer I’m really not a very observant person. When my wife came to live with me she commented on the curtains in the living room—I was living in a furnished flat at the time so the décor was not of my choosing—and she mentioned the butterflies to which I replied, “I have butterflies on my curtains?” I’d been living there for three years and these were <i>giant</i> butterflies. How did I miss them? I live inside my head, more now than I ever used to.<br /><br />Anyway I just thought I’d let you know that I’m still reading your blog. I apologise for the fact that I don’t comment more often but I find that’s the case with most of us these days which is why blogging may <i>appear</i> to be dying; we don’t have the time to comment like we used to. And I do find that a shame. So maybe that’s what’s moved to Facebook, not the blogging <i>per se</i> but the commenting. Much easier to click a LIKE button than write 700 words.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5785052391761134022.post-54586628061207290502014-07-03T11:11:20.961-04:002014-07-03T11:11:20.961-04:00A friend of mine, L.L. Barkat, wrote a book about ...A friend of mine, L.L. Barkat, wrote a book about her experience of spending time in her yard and observing: "God in the Yard".<br /><br />Writing is connection, with ourselves and our readers.Maureenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13290283101378474845noreply@blogger.com