The Written Word

"Why do you keep a blog?" I'm asked.

It's a fair enough question, I guess. Why should I spend so much time putting my thoughts and interests out on the web for the whole world to see? The easy answer is that it's complicated. The long answer has several parts to it. The first and foremost reason is that I'm a writer. That's not a career like being an engineer or a later. Being a writer isn't something you do. It's something you are. You write, not because you want to or because it seems like a good career choice - trust me, it's not. You write because something inside you drives you to write. I could no more stop writing than I could stop breathing. and I write all of the time. I write this blog. I write my movie review blog http://24frmspersecond.blogspot.com/. I write in a journal every day. I write my novels. And I write for my job. And when I'm not writing, I'm often reading what other people have written. Part of being a good writer is being a good reader. So, reason number one for why I write this blog is because writing is my life.

Reason number two for writing this blog (and my journal) is to get all of the crap out of my head. See, I'm always thinking about stuff, most of it not very important, but all of it taking up space in my head. In order to make room for new stuff, I have to get the old stuff out of there. Remember the Harry Potter stories? Remember the Pensieve? Dumbledore would take all of his memories and put them in the Pensieve so they wouldn't clutter up his head and he'd have room for new thoughts. That's exactly the way a journal - or a blog - works. You write down all of the thoughts and ideas and events so that you can get them out of your head and make room for new ones.

Reason number three is that writing all of this stuff down helps me organize it. Up in my head, the stuff is all over the place, just a bunch of random thoughts and ideas all jumbled up in the fishbowl of my mind with lots of other thoughts and ideas, none of which really make a lot of sense when they're up there. but put them down on paper - or on a computer screen, and then I'm forced to organize them, to make some sense out of them, to straighten them all out. Then they go from being a bunch of random thoughts and notions to being ideas and outlines and stories and article. So writing is a way of thinking, or turning and organizing your thoughts into logical ideas that you can then do something with.

Reason number four, and it's the final reason, for keeping this blog is so that my friends know what's going on in my life. my friends - and you all know who you are, can come here and see just how I'm doing. They can read about my ideas and they things that are happening to me, and they can say, "Hmmm...looks like he's doing pretty well for himself right now." Or maybe, "Gosh, he doesn't seem to be doing very well." So it's my way of communicating with my friends. and I guess, truth be told, it's my way of communicating with the rest of the world, with those people in Germany and Russia and Poland and the UK who occasionally come here and read all of my ramblings. I'm telling them something about myself, but also about my country.

So that's it. That's why I blog. and I suppose I'll keep doing for as long as I can.