Tagged! A Roar for Powerful Words

Update 24 Jan 08: All my taggees have responded! (Is that a first?) Go check out the sidenoted links – some great reading about writing, editing, and blogging there.

Kate has tagged each or any Hoyden with the Roar for Powerful Words memememe. (Original meme is here.)

The idea is to list three things the taggee believes are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour. Yes, it’s one of those internet chain letters, but it’s the fun, thoughtful kind.

I’m going to break with tradition and do my tagging first. Who to tag? Mmmm:

a. I’d love to hear tigtog’s take, if that not a cheater-tag.

b. Jangari((Update: Jangari has done the meme here. ~lauredhel)) , the linguist-without-a-language blogging linguistics and politics, particularly Australian Aboriginal issues, at matjjin-nehen.

c. Bluemilk((Update: bluemilk has done the meme here. ~lauredhel)). Y’all know we’re blogcrushin’ on each other, so *tag*.

d. Cupidsbow((Update: Cupidsbow has responded to this meme here. ~lauredhel)) . Your essays are always engrossing and beautifully put together, you write fic as well, I’d be intrigued to know what three points you’d pick out.

e. Brooklynite((Update: brooklynite has responded to this meme here. ~lauredhel)). Having written the wordy sort of Phud, I’d love to hear what you have to say about bloggish writing, academic writing, or any other kind.

~~~

So what to say about blog-writing? Well, I don’t know what is necessary for others for good, powerful writing, and, if I were to be frank, I’d say I still sure don’t know what is necessary for me to produce good, powerful writing. Many of the posts I toil over sink like a stone, and some of the ones I dash off in an trice gain a pile of currency and get passed around and linked to and quoted from. I don’t know that I have much to say about writing that will “teach” anything to people who are far more writerly than I, but I can navel-gaze with the best of them about my own experience. So this is more about the meta than about authorial technique. Which brings me to my three chosen points:

1. Just Write.

If you keep agonising over whether you’re tackling the right subject or hitting the right note, you’ll still be chewing your pencil (or your keyboard) at the next solsticetime. I was scared witless when Tigtog first invited me to join Hoyden About Town. You may not have picked up on this, but I’m naturally shy. Having been the bespectacled, awkward brain who moved schools all the time, I was painfully, agonisingly shy in school. To the point that when I finally made some progress on what was then seen as a major character flaw, this was mentioned by a teacher on my Upper Sixth form [1] school report.

At the time of my Hoyden invite, I was mortified at the thought that maybe no one would be interested in my writing (Yeah – we write only for ourselves? Ha!). I was terrified at the thought that I might annoy some people. I was filled with trepidation at the spectre of debate, and at the idea that maybe some of the stuff I said might be wrong, and I’d be hauled up on it in public. I was worried about being outed, or harassed, or whatever other threats the internet had lurking. Somehow – and through a few online therapy sessions with tigtog – I pushed all this psychic flotsam aside and just. started. writing. And there were hits, and misses, and the odd threat (all feminist bloggers get those), but it’s all ok. As with all the other internet communities I’ve been involved with: in the blogging world the good far outweighs the bad.

2. Put it down straight away. Don’t hold back from writing just because you don’t know where the idea is going, or because you’re not quite sure what you want to say about it. Develop a drafts system, a folder with ideas and URLs and snippets and paragraphs. Carry some sort of device that records ideas as you wander around, dump links into your Sorting folder as you browse, write bits down no matter whether you think they could be useful or not. You may end up with a pile of drafts, but a month or three or twelve down the track, something will come along that fills the gap you couldn’t put your finger on, that rouses your energy, that lights your spark.

3. Co-blog, or have a bloggy confidante or two. For me anyhow, blogging is as much about the conversations as it is about the writing. Blogging builds connections between people you could never have met in real life, people who soothe you, who challenge you, who complement you. Tigtog has been a fabulous co-blogger: we play good blogger/bad blogger, we fill the gap left by the other who is having a busy F2F life or a down week; and we bounce ideas around and provide reality checks. And this little network of femibloggers is a world I don’t know how I did without before it existed. Less than a year of blogging, and here we are. Where will it all go from here?

[1] Yes, I know most Aussies call it Year 12, but my school called it Upper VIth, and Kate lurrrves the BritSpeak.

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Tagged as: blogging, feminism, linkfest, meme, powerful words, writing