The Silken Tent -- The Soul Ajar

May 4, 2005 Wednesday Blaise Cronin, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, has a lot to say about blogs today. In a piece titled "BLOG: see also Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gibberish," he writes: Lately, I’ve been wandering around Blogland, and I’m struck by the narcissism and banality of so many personal blogs . . . .What desperate craving for attention is indicated by this kind of mundane, online journaling? . . . Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? Cronin uses the word "blog" (a blend of "web" and "log" becomes weblog, morphs into 'blog with a self-concious apostrophe and finally becomes just plain blog) generically to mean all non-commercial personal sites. In the online journalling community (a term someone on a discussion list ridiculed me for using – he must hate blogs too), a blog is defined as a site that updates frequently (sometimes several times a day) and exists mostly to provide links to items of information the blogger thinks others will find interesting or compelling. A blog usually contains little thoughtful personal content. That's not a disparagement, just a distinction. An online journal or diary is often a chronicle of the writer's day, and as such usually offers stream-of-conciousness first draft writing. Many such diaries are charming or even absorbing, especially if your life shares much with that of the writer. Some of them, especially those kept by younger writers such as those at Xanga, can be incomprehensible to anyone not part of the writer's immediate circle. The Silken Tent, of course, is neither a blog nor a diary. It's a collection of personal essays. There's a difference. In my very first post I had this to say about my intention: When I write in my private journal, I write for myself, and the only audience I hope to be aware of is the future me who will read it again in a month or a year ("Where is that stuff I wrote about my grandmother's bread bowl?"). What I write here is a public journal, with an immediate and largely anonymous audience. That doesn't mean it isn't authentic. Just shaped. Cronin refers to the "current generation of bloggers." I'm wondering when that generation was born. I went online with a personal site (then called a "homepage," a fairly quaint term Indiana University still uses to describe sites such as Dr. Cronin's) in 1997. "English at 808" resided at Geocities and was concerned solely with my classroom. I posted lesson plans, assignments and due dates, annotated reading lists, bits about literary history. When I left teaching in 1998 I began posting what amounted to personal essays, unaware that there was already a small community of people doing this. When I discovered those folks in 1999, I secured my domain name and paid for space at a hosting service. (The conventional wisdom was that you couldn't really be taken seriously if you used free space such as that provided by Geocities or Diaryland.) Despite some periods when I went weeks or even months without posting (notably in 2004), and even times when I thought about giving the whole thing up and letting the site go dark, I kept on keepin' on. My online oeuvre now comprises some 300 essays. It's the best thing I ever did for my nonfiction writing because it forces me to write for an audience and to be aware of what the subjects I choose say about me. The best reward I get is knowing I actually have readers and getting some occasional feedback from them. I have a loyal coterie of subscribers to my notify list, and others who I know read regularly. There is also the satisfaction of having done some writing and having something to show for it. I know that I crave recognition and acknowledgment of the worth of who I am and what I do. The site has given me that. In 2000 I was invited to be a speaker at the first ever JournalCon, held in Pittsburgh. (Distance and/or scheduling conflicts have prevented me from attending another.) A Unitarian minister in Maryland used one of my pieces as an example in a sermon (in slightly mangled form and without attribution or permission, I might point out). And a college writing text uses one of my pieces as a model for student study and imitation. Pretty good for work in a genre that my former principal called "semi-abstract random hogwash."

May 4, 2005
Wednesday

Blaise Cronin, dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, has a lot to say about blogs today. In a piece titled "BLOG: see also Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gibberish," he writes:

Lately, I’ve been wandering around Blogland, and I’m struck by the narcissism and banality of so many personal blogs . . . .What desperate craving for attention is indicated by this kind of mundane, online journaling? . . . Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers?

Cronin uses the word "blog" (a blend of "web" and "log" becomes weblog, morphs into 'blog with a self-concious apostrophe and finally becomes just plain blog) generically to mean all non-commercial personal sites. In the online journalling community (a term someone on a discussion list ridiculed me for using – he must hate blogs too), a blog is defined as a site that updates frequently (sometimes several times a day) and exists mostly to provide links to items of information the blogger thinks others will find interesting or compelling. A blog usually contains little thoughtful personal content. That's not a disparagement, just a distinction.

An online journal or diary is often a chronicle of the writer's day, and as such usually offers stream-of-conciousness first draft writing. Many such diaries are charming or even absorbing, especially if your life shares much with that of the writer. Some of them, especially those kept by younger writers such as those at Xanga, can be incomprehensible to anyone not part of the writer's immediate circle.

The Silken Tent, of course, is neither a blog nor a diary. It's a collection of personal essays. There's a difference. In my very first post I had this to say about my intention:

When I write in my private journal, I write for myself, and the only audience I hope to be aware of is the future me who will read it again in a month or a year ("Where is that stuff I wrote about my grandmother's bread bowl?"). What I write here is a public journal, with an immediate and largely anonymous audience. That doesn't mean it isn't authentic. Just shaped.

Cronin refers to the "current generation of bloggers." I'm wondering when that generation was born. I went online with a personal site (then called a "homepage," a fairly quaint term Indiana University still uses to describe sites such as Dr. Cronin's) in 1997. "English at 808" resided at Geocities and was concerned solely with my classroom. I posted lesson plans, assignments and due dates, annotated reading lists, bits about literary history. When I left teaching in 1998 I began posting what amounted to personal essays, unaware that there was already a small community of people doing this. When I discovered those folks in 1999, I secured my domain name and paid for space at a hosting service. (The conventional wisdom was that you couldn't really be taken seriously if you used free space such as that provided by Geocities or Diaryland.)

Despite some periods when I went weeks or even months without posting (notably in 2004), and even times when I thought about giving the whole thing up and letting the site go dark, I kept on keepin' on. My online oeuvre now comprises some 300 essays. It's the best thing I ever did for my nonfiction writing because it forces me to write for an audience and to be aware of what the subjects I choose say about me.

The best reward I get is knowing I actually have readers and getting some occasional feedback from them. I have a loyal coterie of subscribers to my notify list, and others who I know read regularly. There is also the satisfaction of having done some writing and having something to show for it.

I know that I crave recognition and acknowledgment of the worth of who I am and what I do. The site has given me that. In 2000 I was invited to be a speaker at the first ever JournalCon, held in Pittsburgh. (Distance and/or scheduling conflicts have prevented me from attending another.) A Unitarian minister in Maryland used one of my pieces as an example in a sermon (in slightly mangled form and without attribution or permission, I might point out). And a college writing text uses one of my pieces as a model for student study and imitation.

Pretty good for work in a genre that my former principal called "semi-abstract random hogwash."