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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Journaling & Blogging

As I was journaling very early this morning I suddenly thought about journaling verses blogging. It occurred to me in the first instance that my journal could likely be the cause of death by boredom. Sometimes I suspect there are tid-bits that someone might find interesting. And I do these days, mix my journaling with many of my poetry first drafts, but it is likely the boredom would set in long before one found an interesting tid-bit.

Granted, I don't journal for the benefit of others. But blogging on the other hand has to be interesting or no one comes back a second or third or fourth time.

There are occasions when I may have a parallel theme running from a blog post and a journal entry but that is more often than not, the exception. So I am wondering about others who both blog and journal - and how they feel the two differ or not, as the case may be. Do you specifically have a different approach to your journaling and blogging? And what other characteristics are found in your journaling? Do you journal in first person? Always? How much self discovery do you find in journaling?

I know, I'm just about as bad as a toddler with all the questions today, but this is really bugging me.

4 comments:

Lucindyl said...

OK. I keep coming back to check the comments here, hoping some of your compatriots will have posted answers to your questions. They're good questions, and I'd love to see what other writers have to say on the matter. That said, I'll quit lurking and start commenting.

Journaling versus blogging:

My personal journaling is freer to contain fragments of drafts, partial descriptions, personal matters, my plainly stated, actual feelings and opinions on things, daily news and happenings around me and furiously scribbled snarly bits when I'm having trouble sitting through church. In short, it's more personal both trivially and on the deepest levels.

My blog writing is always done with a strong sense of audience--sometimes prohibitively so. I spend more time changing details, deleting the unnecessary and choosing specifically suitable words to obtain the effect I want upon my readers. I avoid topics (namely religion and politics) that I feel tend to stir people up in individually unproductive ways, and I go for something that either highlights an inner universal human experience and/or state of being, or the simply silly (because there's only so much inner universal human experience one can stand to read about--and certainly to write about!--at one time). My personal journal does contain a great deal of these deeper ponderings (much more than the blog), but usually not as much of the "blogfluff", although it has rather a lot of other sillinesses tracked across its pages.

Michael, I've posted your question on QL, also. Not to steal your thunder in any way! Quite the opposite; I'm curious, too.

Michael A. Wells said...

Cindy...

You are always welcome to lurk here, but your participation in this now constitutes a discussion and that was exactly what I had hoped for.

I can identify with much of what you have shared with the exception that I never (as I am sure you can tell) shy away from discussing polictical or social commentary. I suppose that comes from many years of active participation in politics.

But my own journaling often tends to be much more personal. And I had not really thought about it but there is a distinct audiance for blogging and when it comes to one's personal journal who is that audiance? Presumably it is yourself and I suppose posterity should you not choose to burn them at some point.

I'm reading the book "Bitter Fame - A Life of Sylvia Plath" by Anne Stevenson. I cannot count the number of books on Plath I have read but I am always looking for new insights on both her work and her life.

I found interesting as assertion by Stevenson that Plath started writing in her journal at a young age because she feared that at some point she would no longer remember how something felt.Writing "how it felt" became an obsession with her and she tended to put her "miseries" down on paper while she was suffering from them.

I often journal about feelings and yes, some of them are negative. But I tend to record the feelings of success, joy, or other positives as well, though sometimes they are fewer or far between.

Sometimes an entry can lead to deeper reflection on a particular point and that is perhaps when I feel journaling is at best. That which provides greater self-discovery can often lead to growth. Though admitedly it is sometimes painful.

Anyway... thanks for taking the time to respond and I'll have to follow the comments over on your blog as well.

Julie Carter said...

I don't keep a journal, but I think Cindy's point about audience is very true. I post nothing in my blog that I would hate for people to know. The same goes for my poetry. But I am comfortable with a certain amount of "Gee, you're weird" that allows me to post pretty freely on a blog.

I guess my public persona is so ingrained that I don't even have to double check it any longer. Not that I don't still write embarrassingly bad poems at times!

Julie

Michael A. Wells said...

I agree there is a certain amount of weird that seems to almost be expected with a blog. I mean you can get pretty technical and dry and of course that is not going to retain readers.

It seems hard for me to imagine many people deep down and personal in their blogs, but I do realize there are some people who evidently don't give a lot of thought to what they post because I keep reading stories of people bad mouthing a boss or something and finding themselves out the office door because of it.

In this day and age with google, nothing like that is going to remain unnoticed for long.