I express, therefore I am |
It’s funny--when I look back on my writing with an objective eye, about as objective as I can be, I think it’s pretty concise, clean, accurate. Years of fact-checking have kept me within the borders. I do not stray outside the lines of science. Oh I’m sloppy on occasion, failing to dot the “i” or cross the “t.” But the guilt never leaves. The perfectionist in me remains disconsolate.
My equally disconsolate muse says my writing is about a sparkling a read as day old salad. My writing tastes like a piece of wilted iceberg lettuce. And it gets worse. When I talk to my sister, Terry, I even sound like lettuce—boring, dry. I speak in terms of achievements, projects, stories, proposals accomplished. She smiles and nods happy to know I’ve kept busy and haven’t decided to go off on a trip to Tibet like I’ve always threatened.
I have a secret life.
Enter blogging.
I stray. Travel off on tangents. I think outside the box, the margins, the facts. Please, whose facts are they anyway? I think blogging gives me the vinaigrette dressing, the croutons, the mandarin oranges, the nuts, the sun dried cranberries and sesame seeds for my prose.
There, on a private anonymous website, I can dangle participles in front of you. Let sentences run and run and run and you’ll never catch them. There you will rarely find a comma or even correct grammatical usage of “that” and “which.” I can leap through fields of expressions like: Oh no you didn’t! Here’s the sitch… I googled her, natch.
While blogging allows me to add flavor to my writing, it also allows me to take “off” the clothing of sensibility and journalistic responsibility. I can practically say anything, accuse anyone and declare my love for another human being—how freeing is that?
I wish my sister blogged. She only dismisses it as though it were an activity for morose writers. Or for teens who have nothing better to do that than to IM friends, listen to their iPods and buy trendy items on eBay.
Yet blogs aren’t just rants, they are tiny microchips of history. I tell my sister that rather than having your daughter go through your musty old things 50 years from now after your funeral, she can just go to a web archive and look up what you had to say. It’s less messy than an old diary and it won’t kick up her mold allergies either.
There’s a lot of wisdom on blogs. Terry has a ton of it. Seems a shame to keep it offline.
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Bernadette Sukley |
| About the author: |
| Bernadette Sukley has written, edited, fact checked for nearly 20 years. Her topics range from health to sports and lifestyle, from human interest to hard news. Her work has appeared in Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated for Women, and ABROAD magazines. Currently polishing up 3 novels for publication, she welcomes discussions on women and literature.
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