Jo at Mylestones described yesterday her weekend of quotidian experiences with her children, concluding, with lovely, resonant truth: “I write so I won’t forget. I write because the little moments matter to me, because they add up to my life.”
She closed her post by asking her readers two questions: Why do you write? What small little moments of the last few days do you want to remember?
I’ll take those in reverse order. The last few days have held a profusion of small moments. Last night, checking on Grace and Whit to see them sleeping in the same bed (the condo we are staying in has two double beds in their room). They were turned away from each other, each a comma on the pillowy white landscape of the pristine bedding. Convincing a crying, ornery Whit yesterday to ride on the bike attached to the back of mine only to hear him proclaim, after a few minutes, “Hey, mummy! You were right! This is super fun!” Watching the backs of two cousins heads, dark and otter-sleek, as they bobbed together in the pool. The night sky scattered with more stars than I’ve ever seen – the light-spangled darkness seemed to arch over us in a semi-circle, coming all the way down to the horizon – last night while Hilary and I walked on the beach after dinner.
The why I write question is one I think of all the time. The answer is both simple and complex. It is about community, it is about catharsis, it is about excavating truth even as I speak it. It is about, more than anything, the way that I am inspired, over and over again, as a reader, and about my stubborn and perhaps wrong-headed hope that I might provide that feeling for someone else. (originally written on 9/20/2009):
There’s been a proliferation of interesting writing on the topic of Why We Blog this week. Ronna addressed it, focusing on three main points: that blogging is a way to get outside ourselves, is therapeutic, and is a way to tell our stories. She asserted, and I agree, that we all have myriad stories to tell. She hinted that in this telling we are both ourselves enriched and, possibly, privileged to participate in the growth of others. Ronna included an Isak Dinesen quote I love: To be a person is to have a story to tell.
She followed up this post with a second, the next day, about the way that “blogging is a way to create and experience community.” I very much agree with this point, which echoed Aidan’s thoughtful observations on why she blogs. I share the sentiment that blogging is a way to meet (and be met by) people whose lives and stories are very different from our own. I am sometimes keenly aware of the general homogeneity of my life. I love my life, of course, but I do have a certain restlessness of the spirit that is slaked, in part, by learning about people whose lives and choices are very different from my own.
So I’ve been thinking this weekend about Why I Blog. I know I feel a visceral impulse to share the stories of my life, both the mundane ones and the meaningful ones. I know that writing often helps me put shape around my nascent or amorphous thoughts, helps me understand the underlying current beneath a riptide of emotion. Joan Didion put it best: “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.”
But there’s another, impossible to ignore, reason why I blog. After all, blogging both assumes and actively seeks an audience. Obviously I need, on some level, to know that someone is reading my words. I think this is a reflection of the basic human need to be truly seen. But is it exhibitionistic? Does it make the thoughts and content less meaningful? Is it the wrong thing, to want someone to be reading? I have thought about this a lot, struggling with the initial feeling that it is immature and needy of me to need someone to be out there reading me. On some level this is just a continuation of a pattern of needing to be validated and approved by the big bad world out there, isn’t it?
I think it is that, yes. But I think it is more than that too. I imagine that most writers write for an audience, whether it’s an audience of one (perhaps Steven King’s Ideal Reader) or millions. I cannot in good conscience claim the title of “writer” for myself, but I know that one reason I blog is because I hope to, someday, provide for someone else that shimmering sigh of recognition that some writing I’ve read has given me. That bone-deep sense of being not alone when someone else can put into words thoughts or feelings that have swarmed incoherently around my head and heart. If I can, someday, give a single reader that feeling that I have had so many times in my years of blog-reading, then I will be happy. It feels arrogant to even wish for that, but in truth, I do. I am personally sustained by those moments when someone else’s writing makes my heart physically swell with identification and awareness, and I aspire to provide that for someone else.
For me, more than the community, more than the catharsis, more than the story-telling, it’s about that. About that feeling of recognition, that single moment when you read a sentence or a paragraph and suddenly understand something you’ve known all along in a new way. Which, when I think about it, is sort of an amalgam of community, catharsis, and story-telling. I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of that feeling many times, and I continue to hope that I might provide it for someone out there.
To illustrate my point, here is one such passage – a paragraph that made me shiver because it put into such beautiful words something I’ve thought before. A paragraph that happens to be ABOUT that feeling. (oh so very meta).
Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, at the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity?
– Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
Yes, I have. And I did just there. And that’s why I write.
(And no, I am not arrogantly comparing myself to one of the great writers of the last few decades. No. I come up to Carol Shields’ ankle. But she inspires me.)
I love this, become I am grappling with this question right now. Or, should I say I am grappling with this already. My blog is a mere week old. I know, I know. But last night I found myself writing and wondering “Why am I doing this? Who cares?” And it feels to early to have those thoughts… I know that I care, but what if that’s it? I’m blogging to chronicle a very specific quest in my life, and I’m glad to document it in this fashion because it helps me organize my thoughts, and not forget a moment. But it is a bit of a tree falls in the forest situation… If I blog and nobody reads, does it make a difference? So thank you for sharing your reasons, as they certainly help illuminate my own.
There really has been a wealth of articles about blogging and why we blog of late. I wonder what’s in the air. I recently wrote a piece about my own journey in blogging and how it inspires me. I wrote about how I am inspired by other bloggers and feel exhilirated when I read the words of those who I can identify with. You are one of those writers for me. I am inspired by your words, their beauty and honesty. So often I relate to what you have to say and find peace and awareness when reading. Thank you for that.
Thank you! You are too generous – hearing this from you makes it All Worth It. So, thank you – these words mean more than you can imagine.
Wonderfully written! It is not any one reason but a myriad of reasons that bring blogs to birth.
I never struggle with why I write. If I didn’t, those words would literally explode from my head. I am sure of this. I struggle with who reads what I write.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post, Lindsey!
“Shimmering sigh of recognition” – YES! That is what I seek, and perhaps will one day share with others through my writing.
The big questions of Why do I write? and the little moments of mothering are all so connected, aren’t they? Throw in Carol Shields and we’re all just ankle biters. But we’ll never stop reflecting, and that’s what makes the writing life–for me–connected and essential.
I write for all of the reasons you describe, and I never tire of reading/writing about the small moments. These are like tiny pebbles dropping into the body of our daily lives with a soft plink, and I am loathe to forget what they sound like.
Yes. You summed up my feelings on why I write both beautifully and succinctly.
“I blog is because I hope to, someday, provide for someone else that shimmering sigh of recognition that some writing I’ve read has given me. That bone-deep sense of being not alone when someone else can put into words thoughts or feelings that have swarmed incoherently around my head and heart.”
I love how you put it here. And for the record, you’ve provided that shimmering sigh of recognition for me several times in the short time I’ve been reading. So thank you!
Sometimes I worry that blogging is a narcissistic act by narcissistic people. But you are right–it’s undeniable that blogging opens us to other great voices and minds, and is a connecting force as well.
It’s true that while blogging is primarily for us, the authors, “blogging both assumes and actively seeks an audience”. As I am a brand new blogger, I asked myself this question before I started. Couldn’t I just keep a journal instead? As much as blogging is an outlet for us to deposit our thoughts, there is also that hope that someone reads it and relates to it in some way or another.
Me too. All of this. Yes.
(and I’m so excited to read the Joan Didion quote because I have it at the top of my blog as “unknown.” I didn’t know who said it…I should always come to you when I don’t know who said something 🙂
Exactly.
Love these discussions, because they go in a breadth of directions, not just the obvious.
Everything you say here resonates with me. And words do change lives, in ways large and small.
For most of us who write – whatever the outcome – to some extent the response is simplistic. An umbrella for all the more nuanced responses you touch on here.
Why write?
Can’t not.
These are the same reasons why I blog too. And yes, I do hope someone, even just one, reads it and is inspired. You inspire me every time I read your incredible, touching words.
Phrases like: “pillowy white landscape of the pristine bedding” + “dark and otter-sleek” – just leave me in awe.
You put my thoughts into such elegant words. I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I love this post, the bits older and newer. As you know, I ask this question – the big WHY question – all the time. And I have so many answers. Answers that commingle and collide. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the answer, my answer, is quite simple. I write because I have no choice. I am not happy when I am not writing, asking, thinking in words.
(I imagine this holds true for you as well?)
I write to capture my own commas on the pillows and otters in the pool. And, like you, I do want people to read it, appreciate it, relate to it. With both of these as goals, I sometimes wonder, am I writing this because I want to remember it, or because I know it’ll get a few more comments? I hate even thinking that, if I’m honest.
You, my friend, should be very, very happy:
“If I can, someday, give a single reader that feeling that I have had so many times in my years of blog-reading, then I will be happy. It feels arrogant to even wish for that, but in truth, I do. I am personally sustained by those moments when someone else’s writing makes my heart physically swell with identification and awareness, and I aspire to provide that for someone else.”
You have. You do. Over and over again. For me.
(And thanks for the links. I’m grateful – for more than can be expressed here…)
Let me belatedly join the chorus of readers here who look to you and your writing as both expansive and distilling.
I hope you are having a wonderful trip with your wonderful family.