Guest Post: The Glory of Blogging – A Writer’s Perspective

This week’s guest post is from my friend Andrea Cumbo. She is the writer of Andilit and essays and interviews that have been included in South Loop Review, Science and Spirit, Ginosko, and other publications. She lives in Baltimore where she is just discovering how lovely dusk can be in Spring. Andi and I met via Social Media, shared friends, and a shared love of good music.

I started blogging for selfish reasons: I wanted more publicity, and I wanted to avoid “real” writing. Yes, it is ironic that I wanted to publicize myself for something I was avoiding, but then, that’s the truth. A lot of us writers do a lot of things to avoid doing our “real” work – maybe that’s true for everyone. (Ever cleaned the kitchen instead of doing something that really needed doing?)

But as time passed, I began enjoying the discipline of writing a blog post most days. I found it really put me in my writing space, and it also made me feel like I had done some “real” work. Even if I had only posted 300 words, at least I had written something.

Now, my blog is central to my writing practice. It is what I do first in the morning (well, after email), and it is keeps my writer’s mind alive for insight; it keeps me alert to the world. What catches my eye and would be interesting for my readers to think about? What will I say about this book or this CD? What are other people saying around the web (and the world) that I can connect to? Because that’s the central thing about blogging and about writing – connection. We write these words because we want people to read them (at least we do that if we want to be good writers). We write for others. If we don’t, well, then we should stop writing.

Writing my blog also ties me to humanity. Writing is, by nature and necessity, very solitary. It’s hard to write and talk at the same time (although my college students seem to be able to text and talk – a feat I will never master). It’s hard to get thoughts gathered into folds of clarity when you’re in an office with people shouting over your head. It’s hard to move past the surface into the deep blue of meaning when the barista keeps switching on the milk steamer. Thus, most writers, myself included, spend a great deal of our time alone at a desk with coffee (and in my case, cats) as our only companion. But my blog (and all the ways I market it) connects me with people. I find out what others say about what I’ve said; I get little messages telling me someone liked something (or hated it); I hear from the universe beyond my desk. That’s irreplaceable.

Ultimately, this connection is why I do it – for me, but also for the people I often feature on my site. I absolutely love touting the accomplishments of people I know (or don’t) and whose work, insight, music, or words I appreciate. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of music reviews and interviews, and since I love music (and musicians), I am thrilled when a singer or band comes back and tells me how much they liked the review or how many hits their MySpace page started to get after the post. It’s my secret (or at least it used to be secret) hope that someday my blog will help someone get signed – a poet will get his first book contract, a band will land with a great label – because my feeble words brought them to the attention of the right person at the right time. That would be the ultimate affirmation for me – someone else’s success.

Writing is a beautiful, torturous, amazing and lonely pursuit. My blog, well, it just makes all of those things a little more human, a little less solitary, a little more glorious. I need, we all need, just a little more glory in our days, don’t you think?

Tagged as: blogging, Marketing, Social Media