It may be a little early to get meta around here, but I'm about to blog about blogging.
I will freely confess that I'm still feeling my way as to what this blog will be. I'm also, not coincidentally, feeling my way into being an actual writer, as in one who has actual readers.
It seems to me that the word "blog" is used to describe a number of very different kinds of sites, more than can be usefully grouped under a single umbrella. I certainly don't plan for this blog to be an online diary, a place where I discuss my daily life. For one thing, as I alluded to in a previous post, the life of a writer is deadly boring, consisting mostly of sitting in front of a computer, interspersed with staring off into space. Occasionally I liven things up by moving my laptop from one room to the next.
I do plan to use this blog to write about things that interest me -- mostly cultural things, but probably some law stuff as well. I like doing critical writing, and its great to have an outlet for it.
But the main purpose of this blog is to be a forum for interacting with my readers, when and if they come to exist. And that's the part I'm thinking about now.
On the one hand, I'm well aware of the J.D. Salinger/Thomas Pynchon strain in American writing, where writers should be recluses, completely private, invisible to the world other than through their work. And I do think its true that readers can know too much about a fiction writer, that the person can become a distraction from the work. I also think that writing fiction is like performing magic tricks -- both rely on sleight of hand to make the fake seem real -- and if you give away the secrets of your bag of tricks then the jig is up.
But I also think the vast majority of writers, myself included, hunger for interaction with our readers. The act of writing is itself so private that when the book does enter the world we want to accompany it. Traditionally that was done by the book tour, though it turns out that book tours are a relatively recent invention -- started by Jacqueline Susann, of all people, in the 1960s. Book tours never made much practical sense in terms of cost-benefit, and its not surprising that publishers are increasingly looking to the web rather than bookstore signings to promote books. And the so-called web 2.0 is a fantastic medium for any writer, published or unpublished, to reach out to readers.
I'm curious what readers think of all this. At this point, this blog's readership is a small trickle, which may or may not pick up once the book actually hits the shelves next week. But I'd like to issue a standing invitation to any and all who come across this: what do you, the reader, want a fiction writer's blog to be? Are there particular things that you'd like to see addressed? Or is the whole blogging enterprise a bad idea for a fiction writer, who should let his or her work speak for itself? I'll keep an eye out for any responses, and will revisit the issue in a month or so.
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