I'm a Bloggy Writer

Apparently, I am. I was told in no uncertain terms quite recently by another writer that I was a ‘bloggy writer’. Hmm, I thought – I think that’s an insult. I do believe they also threw in the term cynical while they were at it. Again, hmmm – yup, that was definitely an insult.

But here’s the thing even if it is true, why should that be an insult to me? It takes an enormous amount of work of work to put together a blog and maintain a blog, gain an audience and keep that audience engaged. Between my two blogs I have written a total of 850 posts over 25 months – I gotta get some love for that, don’t I? I mean just the sheer volume of it, has to say something about me as a writer, doesn’t it?

Now granted not all of those posts were writing per se – some are vids, some are toons, some are quotes but I dont’ think I’m exagerating when I say that close to 90% is writing – just writing, whether opinion pieces, rants, humor, fiction, poetry, political analysis, satire, or parodies. I’ve written a helluva lot of words over the past two years on these blogs and for the most part I’m damn proud of those words.

In addition to that, I have written thousands more words in my work as a freelancer for websites, ads, business copy, etc. And let’s not even go into the novels. So, I’m thinking I’m nearing a pretty big number when it comes to my overall output of words. Yes, I hear some of you saying but quantity is not necessarily quality. Well, okay that’s true. However, between the two blogs, I have gotten close to 200,000 hits – that has to mean something doesn’t it? I think it might mean that somebody somewhere is reading me. What do you think? Am I right or am I wrong?

And even on the quality issue, the way you do anything I believe if you want to succeed is in this sequence: quantity, quality, viability. In other words, first let’s get the production up, let’s get writing, then let’s work on improving that production without losing momentum, and then finally let’s pick out the best of the best.

While not all bloggers are writers proper it is my belief that not all writers can be bloggers. There is a certain savvy that is necessary to succeed as a blogger and it’s not just a bunch of beautiful words, though those don’t hurt, it is a mixed medium with actual interchange of ideas with others – it’s visual, audio and text. It’s the whole enchilada. And it’s intensive training in my humble opinion for any writer who wants to become good at their craft because they have to run the whole production, they have to learn to write on deadline if they hope to keep their audience and they have to learn to improve to keep their audience and the interchange happening.

Hey who knows, Pulitizer may someday come out with a best in blogging award. If Algore can get one I figure all of us have a chance.

So while being a bloggy writer may not make me a proper writer, it does make me a very productive and fast thinking, fast typing, happy writer. And without these blogs there are so many things I would have never thought to write about, think about and talk about – without these blogs there are so many ideas I would never have been exposed to, so many viewpoints I’d never have known about or shared, so many, many things – so, I’m thinking being called a bloggy writer might not actually be an insult at all. What say you?