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I launched a blog years ago to support my book The Startup Garden, and eventually let it go dark. Or dim, I suppose....
It just got too hard to write frequently, and I lost sight of what the site was meant to do. This month I've been more regular, as it were, and plan to continue to post until I acheive a simple goal: find my true blog-voice.
My book was written to help folks move forward with their entrepreneurial ventures, yet my site has been less focused. At any rate, resuming the discipline has got me thinking about a topic far too many of us folks who blog write about, which is what blogs are for....
The topic brings to mind one of my favorite poems, by Tom Wayman, titled What Good Poems Are For. I hope that I’m not violating any copyright law here by reprinting it in its entirety. I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere on line. Here goes:
What Good Poems Are For
To sit on a shelf in the cabin across the lake
where the young man and the young woman
have come to live—there are only a few books
in this dwelling, and one of them
is this book of poems.
To be like plants
on a sunlit windowsill
of a city apartment—all the hours of care
that go into them, the tending and watering,
and yet to the casual eye they are just present
--a brief moment of enjoyment.
Only those who work on the plant
know how slowly it grows
and changes, almost dies from its own causes
or neglect, or how other plants
can be started from this one
and used elsewhere in the house
or given to friends.
But everyone notices the absence of plants
in a residence
even those who don’t have plants themselves.
There is also (though this is more rare)
Bob Smith’s story about the man in the bar up North,
a man in his 50’s, taking a poem from a new book Bob showed him
around from table to table, reading it aloud
to each group of drinkers, because, he kept saying,
the poem was about work he did, what he knew about,
written by somebody like himself.
But where could he take it
except from table to table, past the fuck offs
and the Hey, that’s pretty goods? Over the noise
of the jukebox and the bar’s TV,
past the silence of the lake,
a person is speaking
in a world full of people talking.
Out of all that is said, these particular words
put down roots in someone’s mind
so that he or she likes to have them here—
these words that no one was paid to write
that live with us for a while
in a small container
on the ledge where the light enters.
"A person is speaking in a world full of people talking."
Yeah, that pretty much says it all to me. That’s what I want other blogs to do for me, and above all, that’s what I aspire to do.
To me the vast majority of blogs are good ideas gone bad. So much noise and clutter and self-techno-love of what can be done rather than what should be done. Too much tagging and linking and spinning and flashing and just not enough speaking. They make me feel anxious when I visit them, fearful that I’m missing the point, or don’t have the time to visit the links, or won’t download the coolest new viral piece-o-intellectual-trinket.
I’m not anti-technology, nor anti-fun geeky features. I just believe they should be used proportionally, instrumentally. Few blogs realize the promise of the medium, and I don’t have the time, patience, energy, or concentration to keep up with the cacophonous blogosphere. And as a result I’ve also put less and less mind and material on this site.
Recently Seth Godin commented that blogging is the new poetry, which is a scary thought. That would mean that the only people who earn a living are those who teach the craft as opposed to those who excel at it. It would mean that the majority of the work is sentimental, inscrutable, pretentious, and generally irrelevant (and this from a guy who loves poetry.)
And while he may believe that the main reason that most bloggers blog is “not for commercial gain or to find a large audience of strangers. Instead, it’s a form of self-expression, a chance to be creative or share some ideas,” go out and find me one serious poet who wouldn’t kill for commercial gain or widespread acclaim.
I think great blogs should do a few simple things: serve as a medium for individuals to speak in their own voice. They should start conversations. They should realize the promise of the technology. And as I discover more on this topic, I'll post it.
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Comments
I hear you Tom. Here is a post I ran at bizsolutionsplus last week:
Start Conversations, Don't End Them
I just spoke via telephone with John Moore from Brand Autopsy. He called me out of the blue just to chat. What a nice surprise, and a great thing to do. I made a note to myself to call a fellow blogger in the next week just to say "Hi, I really enjoy your blog."
At some point within the conversation, we got around to discussing Seth Godin's Blog, which we agreed is awesome, and Tom Peter's Blog. We feel a bit differently about Tom's postings. While we both have great respect for his accomplishments and his ideas, we concurred that Tom leaves little room for disagreement. His posts carry a tone that cries "I am the be-all and end-all of business thought."
Of course, being a New Englander and a cradle-Catholic, it wasn't long before I began over-analyzing and feeling remorse and guilt over some of my postings, which can be guilty of a similar attitude. Thanks to John, I promise to work on that. Long ago, I learned there is very little black and white in our world, and besides, the gray is much more interesting and thought-provoking.
Because I want my postings to start conversations, not end them, I vow to work hard to be less didactic and more thought-provoking.
Posted by: Lewis Green | 09.07.06
Hey Tom;
I am also a blogger who built a blog around a book. The good news is that blogs can help us writers keep our pencil sharp.
What is interesting is that many of the great bloggers (like Seth), simply post random thoughts in short posts designed to get a discussion going. Maybe this is how we need to go.
Mike
Posted by: Michael Stelzner | 09.07.06
I don't know, Tom, it sounds like you'd rather only people with "good blogs" have a voice? I'm one who identifies with the statement about self-expression and sharing ideas. I started only a few months ago, and realize it'll take practice to really find my voice, so to speak, but I don't mind. Maybe I'll be famous, maybe not.
I think good developing blogs are "out there"; eventually they will be identified and spread virally, and grow from it. But that takes time.
But I won't quit my day job.
Posted by: Robert Hruzek | 09.07.06
Hey, these are wonderful comments--to quote Steve Martin (which I know Robert is fond of doing), I'd like to thank each and every one of you: thank you, thank you, thank you. (It's a joke that works better in a large room of people, but ya know, you get the idea.)
Posted by: Tom Ehrenfeld | 09.07.06
Lewis -- Great additions you offered up to Tom's post -- thanks!
Seth Godin has a certain style, as does Tom Peters. But a real gift of blogging is that it can help a writer find his or her own unique voice...quoting Tom Ehrenfeld here (which _I_ am fond of doing): "...great blogs should do a few simple things: serve as a medium for individuals to speak in their own voice...."
In other words -- blogs give us room to grow as writers.
As for the "shorty & pithy" vs. "long-like-essay" question raised by Michael, seems to me that a combination works best for most blogs. But ultimately, it depends on your style of writing.
I put myself in the "essayist" category of blogging. Probably because I was trained as a journalist (and not a copywriter or similar), I can't suggest a thought without offering up supporting documentation, sources, and an opposing point of view. In short, I have a hard time writing short. (And this comment sure proves it!)
Posted by: Ann Handley | 09.07.06
Tom - blogs are much more then this. They allow individuals to dump their knowledge into a public database for others to browse and search, they allow employees to communicate internally, they allow people to share information in times of crisis... I could go on an d on. Just because you can't keep up with the blogosphere doesn't mean it should be simplified! You're not supposed to keep up with it! This is its major advantage: It allows people to follow their own areas of interest. It's all up to you. Therefore, I recommend that you subscribe to the feeds that you like (choosing Seth Godin seems to be a good choice if you like following the crowd) and enjoy and let bloggers do as they may. Stop getting so freaked out and embrace the new medium.
Posted by: Chad | 09.10.06
Thanks for the post, Chad. If I came across as cranky and anti-blog, my bad. My main point here is that far too many of the blogs I view (and I do read/browse quite a few) fail to realize the promise of the technology by relying too much on what's nifty and momentarily cool rather than finding the best way to utilize the tools. This is not so much a rant against what blogs could be but a complaint about what I see as current state of many of them. At any rate, I do take your point--and thanks for reading and contributing your point.
Posted by: Tom Ehrenfeld | 09.11.06