I never imagined when I first started blogging that I would be where I am now. What started off as a blog to showcase the Midlands has slowly become a place where I write about my thoughts, dreams, ideas and, of course, my experiences. Sometimes it’s made up mumbo jumbo, sometimes it’s my honest, deepest and purest feelings. I have always been a writer, a wordsmith, a lover of books and a consumer of literature. I wrote my first “novel” consisting of twenty chapters at the age of nine in standard two. I wrote it in a week, barely stopping to eat or drink, so inspired was I by the story in my head and my desire to get it into words on paper as soon as possible. Since then, I have started many a story and novel and mountains of chapter ones lie dormant in notebooks and on hard drives. At any one time I have at least three stories in my head, and part of the reason I love meeting new people is that I love inventing characters in my imagination out of their little nuances or quirky habits. I currently have two plans sketched out, two plans that I think may really come together this time – it’s just a matter of sitting down and belting them out. I am currently taking the necessary steps to carve myself out some time for the production of these ideas. Being a writer sometimes involves more hustling than a floor trader. And then of course, there’s this little blog to look after too. A blog that I’ve started tending to every day this year, a little blog whose viewership so far this month is more than my entire viewership for the whole of last year. A little blog people visit everyday for a bit of inspiration, humour, beauty, fun, and, lets be honest, a little bit of me and my life. This can be very, very scary. But, as a writer, it is essential to get my work out there – for people to interact with my words and ideas. In this regard, writing this blog has been paramount in my continued desire to sit down and actually write a proper novel. If people like reading what I have to say enough that they come back every day to check if I’ve written something else, or if they’re so moved by something I’ve written that they’re compelled to share it with others or comment on it or re-blog it, well, man, that’s far better than writing a whole book and then waiting for a slew of rejection letters to come back from publishers. Or is it? I’m thinking that it is now time to face those fears of failure and rejection.
I have been worried for a little while that I have been exposing myself too much on this blog – too much of myself and my story. Sometimes I don’t chat to my friends for weeks, and then when we do get together, I realise that they mostly know what is going on in my life because they read my blog. It’s kinda weird to try and remember what you’ve shared and what you haven’t. Even when I meet strangers who read this blog, they chat to me about Andrew and his cooking, or my dogs (by name) or my life on the farm. Is it healthy for everyone to know who I am and where I live and work and what my deepest fears are?
This passage from the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie really hit home when I came across it:
“Often she would sit in cafe’s, or airports or train stations, watching strangers, imagining their lives, and wondering which of them were likely to have read her blog. Now her ex-blog. She had written the final post only days ago, trailed by two hundred and seventy-four comments so far. All those readers, growing month by month, linking and cross-posting, knowing so much more than she did; they had always frightened and exhilarated her. SapphicDerrida, one of the most frequent posters, wrote: I’m a bit surprised by how personally I’m taking this. Good luck as you pursue the unnamed “life change” but please come back to the blogosphere soon. You’ve used your irreverent hectorings, funny and thought-provoking voice to create a space for real conversations about an important subject. Readers like SapphicDerrida, who reeled off statistics and used words like “reify” in their comments, made Ifemelu nervous, eager to be fresh and to impress, so that she began, over time, to feel like a vulture hacking into the carcasses of people’s stories for something she could use. Sometimes making fragile links to race. Sometimes not believing herself. The more she wrote, the less sure she became. Each post scraped off yet one more scale of self until she felt naked and false.”
How amazing is that? Adichie has perfectly described, with the most harrowing metaphors, the life of the blogger. I’m not talking about fashion or beauty bloggers, DIY or foodie bloggers. I’m talking about the bloggers who write about life, and feelings, and ideas – the bloggers who write about the human mind over material things. Bloggers with authors stuck inside of them. Bloggers who blog because it is slightly easier to sit down every day and write a short passage than construct an entire novel. The kind of bloggers I love. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d rather read about your heartbreak than your favourite brand of lipstick. Talking about your heart break or your opinion however, brings judgement; it brings critique; it brings self-doubt. Writing about a leather jacket or a foot scrub is far easier than revealing your deepest and darkest inner-most mental workings. People cannot tear you to the ground if you’re not exposing yourself. But are you really living in the world as a writer if you’re not opening yourself up to critique? And the more you are critiqued, the stronger you get in spirit, the more confident you get in your trade and the better your art gets.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post that I loved so much, called Spreading The Love. Other people loved it too, it was shared on Facebook and Twitter, and I was so happy that it resonated with people, because I had such a great time writing it. The words flew from my fingers as I typed that post, I couldn’t keep up with the thoughts and ideas in my head – I felt like that little girl writing her first book at age 9 all those years ago – completely vibrating on another cellular energy level of inspiration. My best feeling in the world. A reader commented on this post, calling the post OTT and telling me that I was not being true to myself – that I didn’t sound like the person I wrote about in other facets of my life. Like she knew me. At first I thought that maybe she was a friend of mine writing under a false name, but then I realised that none of my friends ever would do that to me. And then it dawned on me that she was only doing what so many of us humans do: we put people into boxes without remembering that none of us are one-dimensional, that there are so many facets to a human being. I like love drinking wine and swearing – this doesn’t mean that I can’t be a gentle or loving person, or that I can’t write an inspiring post about loving others. I love working out and doing yoga, but I also enjoy a hamburger every week now and then. Most of my favourite people in the world are both saints and sinners. Aren’t we all? Wouldn’t life be dead boring if we could sum a person up straight away and say: oh, she’s such a saint, or he’s a sinner. There are so many layers to every single person on this planet, and I so love writing about them. We cannot, try as we might, put people in boxes. Ignore the small people who do – the ones who try and tell you who you are – it just shows that they don’t know who they are. Hell, does anyone REALLY even know who they are? EVER? And I’ll tell you something, I felt more myself writing that post than I had done writing anything else in a long time. Ah, and this is totally why I love us humans and our funny lives and all the wonderful things that go on in our heads.
So, I’ve been struggling with the concept of this blogging platform for a little while (you may have noticed? Haha). When someone you don’t even know decides that you’re not being yourself after you have expressed those very words from inside your heart and spirit, it’s difficult to remain enamoured with blogging and the laying out of your soul for everyone to read and then pick apart.
And then yesterday, just when I needed it the most, I watched this amazing video clip, sent to me by my old friend, Victoria. It’s a graduation speech by Neil Gaiman, a man who has defied all stereotypes and climbed out of every box ever put on the planet. He is a writer. But not just an adult fiction writer or a children’s literature writer. He writes EVERYTHING: comic books, news articles, screenplays, children’s books, song lyrics, television series and adult fiction. He is a real inspiration and you MUST watch it. It’s twenty minutes long, so make a cup of coffee and then settle down to be amazed and inspired. The whole thing is lovely and is entitled “Six Ways to Make Sure You Don’t Hate Your Life and Actually Enjoy It and Stuff“; the man is stockpiled full of pearls of wisdom. But what really spoke to me was this statement:
“The moment that you feel that just possibly you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of you heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself… that’s the moment you may be starting to get it right. The things I’ve done that have worked the best are the things that I was least certain about – the stories where I was sure that they’d either work or, more likely, be the kind of embarrassing failures that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time. They always had that in common. Looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes, but when I was doing them, I had no idea. I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you know was going to work?”
Making art is about exposing yourself. It is about getting naked. It is about revealing your interactions with life and people and circumstances. It is about using everything that happens to you in life, every day, to “make good art”. It is about opening yourself up to criticism. There will be people who try put you into a box. BREAK THAT BOX. Make your own box. Throw away the bloody boxes. But don’t ever stop writing or drawing or singing or dancing about what’s going on in that noggin’ of yours. People like it. People identify with it. And the only way you’ll ever know if you’re good at something is by getting yourself out there. Stand naked in the street. There may be a couple of hurled insults. So what. There may also be praise, encouragement and support. How will you ever know if you don’t try? Let’s go be naked little artists. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
With love xxx
Image: source
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