Navel Gazing and The Blogosphere

There's a a niggling voice in my head about this blogging game, about its relevance and the noise that it makes. I sometimes trawl around the place, just listening to the 'chatter', and it seems to me to be quite maddeningly mindless - some of the time it does, and yet because it is written down it commands a little more attention than it should and it is somehow lifted in importance - seems to be lifted at least.

Don't get me wrong, some people tell you interesting things about their world or their day, things that you would tune into if you overheard them talking in a bus queue, and when they stopped speaking you'd want to ask them to go on and say more - if that wasn't a rude intrusion. Some people have useful information or tips that might be relevant to you as a novice in their field or as someone just interested in knowing stuff. But to be honest and blunt, some people are just concerned with the banal: Why when I say I am a writer do people ask what it is I have written as though they are asking me to prove it? They wouldn't do that for any other profession! What nonsense is sometimes spoken here on the blogosphere. What self-obsessed twaddle. If someone hearing that you do something is interested enough to ask for more information about what you do, be flattered enough that you seem interesting and get over yourself.

And so this has got me turning over an old chestnut of mine: why am I here? Not why am I here on this earth - that's a completely other chestnut. But why am I here blogging? I was encouraged to 'join the blog club' by other writers. They said I ought to, that it was the world we lived in, that it was another tool in the promotion of ourselves as writers (even though I hate all self-promotion and do not even plug my children's book in the school where I work because I feel that would be taking advantage of children I work with and for and care about). I can see that for some this blogging game works in the promotion of their work (even though we sometimes have to wade through the banal and the downright inappropriate - you wouldn't tell a stranger in the street the details of your own mental health... but people on the blogosphere feel that they can do that when the stranger has no face!). For long enough I was hanging up flash fiction pieces here on this blog, a couple a week, hoping that someone visiting might be interested enough to read my writing (after all that's the point of writing really, to be read). I have posted a whole novel in flashes here and that felt like there was a worthwhile point to blogging. This project has been at an end now for a wee while... and so I am like that guy at the party who is feeling a little awkward and wondering what else he can say to keep the girl beside him from moving away. And here I am indulging in a bit of navel gazing and wondering what I do now to justify this here blog. I certainly don't want to discuss my mental health or indeed the symptoms of my physical health; I don't want to discuss my job or my personal circumstances or my financial place in the world or my religion or lack of it; I don't want the banal matter of when I write and whether I use notebooks or pen or pencil or eat biscuits between paragraphs - any of that to occupy this space. But I want something.

So, I am considering another series of flashes and posting these up here. I know some writers would tell me that I could do 'better' with them and make money out of them in some other places... and if I had a head for business I might do that. But I am a writer and all I do is write; the business end of my life can take care of itself. And that sounds a bit like a manifesto to be going on with and one that I could live with. There. It is decided. I shall begin a series of flash fiction posts here next week, something to read. So, if you are interested, watch this space.