Blogging about Blogging (with a dash of Kurt Vonnegut)
Writing is hard. I've been sitting here for, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out how I should start this, the first post of my new (and only) personal blog. But that's the whole point of keeping a blog in the first place--that is, I started this blog because writing is hard. At least, it's hard for me. I'm not bad at it, but I want to get better. Much better. I'm told that my writing will improve if I write every day, so my goal is to start writing something daily. I don't plan to record all of it on this blog, but I figure that the blog should give me an outlet to write for, and I probably will record much of it here. And as an added bonus, the chance (however slim) that somebody else will eventually read some of my posts might motivate me to write somewhat more goodly.
Problem is, I don't have much to say every day. And shouldn't we reserve our words for those times when we actually have something to say? In my eyes, writing just for writing's sake is kind of indulgent, and so I feel kind of silly even starting this project. I'm worried that I'll just end up writing about myself or meta-writing about writing. I mean, look at this post so far: all I've written about is myself and writing itself. Self-referential, much?
Kurt Vonnegut once said, "I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak." I'm not at all trying to imply that by writing this blog I am creating "literature"--at least, not "literature" in the sense that Vonnegut is using the term. He's just making a good point about the perils of self-reference, you know? I'm interested in both writing and myself, and this blog is essentially functioning as writing practice for me, and I've even written the words "I" and "write" in the title of this blog, and so at times I'm undoubtedly going to write about writing or about myself. But it would still be kind of nice if my blog didn't just disappear up its own asshole, so to speak. At least, not all the way up.