Do The Write Thing

Even if you have nothing to say, say it, advised one of my tutors at university, which reminds me of Goethe’s aphorism: “When ideas fail, words come in very handy”.

In the blogosphere no one can hear you scream, particularly when you are not writing. It is important to be out there honking your personal horn in the intergridlock, not twiddling one’s thumbs whilst sucking a goose’s quill for inspiration. The advantage of writing a blog is that ideas do not have to spring from your brain fully formed, nor must prose be crafted and buffed to a shine, but all the mind-jerks, tropes, digressions, and fluffy irrelevances should be recorded as they well up. Print and be heartily and healthily damned. Let others panhandle your aperçus for gold.

Barbara Kingsolver counselled: “Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” Writing for other people cramps one’s style leading one to sublimate one’s individuality. The internet allows freedom to express oneself without fear or favour and let rip without kowtowing to advertisers, editors, received wisdom or public opinion.

Everything I’ve written here so far runs counter to a previous article where I mischievously suggested that blogging was just one of many of the types of effluvium issuing from the moronic inferno of the internet. You can’t damn something because it is hijacked by the vicious, the malcontent and the inarticulate.

Having said that, the importance of good writing is undervalued. Somerset Maugham observed: “To write simply is as difficult as to be good.” And here’s the crashbangwallop moment where I relate the scribblative arts to winemaking. But… that is for another time, oh best beloved, because having a blog is have the freedom to pull up sudd______