After several weeks of dabbling here, I’m still torn over the twenty-first century quandary: to blog or not? “Why I Blog,” an essay by Andrew Sullivan, senior editor of Atlantic Monthly, has helped put the practice in perspective and inspired me to continue exploring.
Sullivan considers historical cousins to the weblog: the ship’s log, diary writing, Aristotle’s Dialogues, and Pascal’s Pensees. But the clearest roots are perhaps in the essaies – or “attempts” – of Renaissance writer, Michel de Montaigne, whom Sullivan calls the “quintesstential blogger.”
Montaigne was living his skepticism, daring to show how a writer evolves, changes his mind, learns new things, shifts perspectives, grows older – and that this, far from being something that needs to be hidden behind of veneer of unchanging authority, can become a virtue, a new way of looking at the pretensions of authorship and text and truth. Montaigne, for good measure, also peppered his essays with myriads of what bloogers would call external links. His own thoughts are strewn with and complicated by the aphorisms and anecdotes of others.
Sullivan defends the practice of blogging for reporters — not as a replacement for more composed news articles but as a supplement that provides immediate feedback, lively conversation, and broad accountability.
It’s obvious how blogging fits into the life of a writer with an audience. How it fits into an obscure creative nonfiction writer’s life is not so clear. Yet even without an audience, I’m drawn to blogging because it is one more form of creative nonfiction to play with, a seedbed for new ideas, and a public form to give rhythm to a regular writing habit. It won’t replace my polished pieces, but it’s worthy of exploration.
In the spirit of Montaigne, I’ll continue and approach it like I do any writing project: jump in and see where it goes.
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