Word After Word

“Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. Blogging is writing out loud.”  Andrew Sullivan says, and he says you can’t have “blogger’s block.”

I love Andrew Sullivan’s article on writing in general and blogging in particular in The Atlantic Monthly this month and I love the phrase “Blogging is writing out loud.”

But I think blogging is more like walking than power athletics. When I ride my bike, hard, in the cold wind and the sun is setting so fast and the farmers are grinding up the soybean plants, hunkered down in thick coats in dusky fields (Jim will say it was not very hard, and he will point out I stopped three times–three times!) that is more like writing an essay. I am working. Blogging is easy and slow and you can talk to a friend while you are doing it–you ARE talking to a friend. Writing a sonnet is an extreme sport. Writing a novel is an extreme sport.

Blogging is seeing your thoughts. Blogging is a conversation. Blogging is no sweat.

I heard a great quote at the gym last week: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Blogging keeps my writing muscles moving but it isn’t really making them stronger, I don’t think. It’s low impact, it’s for fun. Maybe every writing assignment should initially present itself that way.