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Blogging Feels Like Giving Birth

Posted by Hels • 9/08/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blogging

In order to get out a good quality post every 3.5 days, I have a schedule that reminds me of pregnancy and delivery:

1. The announcement phase - I don't think about the labour ahead. The first day is just for gentle consideration of ideas and images.

2. The nesting phase - the second day is for research but no writing.

3. Active labour phase - the third day is for vigorous writing, until it gets down to 2 minute contractions and delivery of the final posting. Publication!

4. Post-publication wine all round. I am proud of my effort. My husband is wished mazel tov by everybody! Life is full of sleep and utter relaxation for 12 hours

User Comments

9/08/09

Hels

My colleague says he prefers a fishing metaphor.

He loads bait onto his line, casts off and waits for an idea to nibble. If this succeeds, he reels in the idea quickly, before it gets away.

If he wants to trawl more widely for ideas, he throws a net into the water.

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9/08/09

Deray28

Interesting analogies, I think I'm more of the fishing kind I don't care if I post twice a week or twice a month, but, when I get an idea it has to be written as soon as possible.

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9/08/09

Agit8r

and I thought that blogging was arduous for ME... o_0

[reply]
1. 9/08/09
  
  Hels
  
  Who knew that blogging was gendered, Agit8r?
9/08/09

DailyBeerReview

Speaking of giving birth, you could have written about birth labor on Labor Day, yesterday. But then I saw you are in Australia and spelled it labour anyway, so never mind.

[reply]
1. 9/08/09
  
  HollytheHousewife
  
  There are a lot of aussies around here...
9/08/09

christibroer

It feels like I'm yelling into the wind, now.

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9/08/09

nothingprofound

My aphorisms grow in me like tomato plants. When the tomato is ripe it falls off the vine and on to the page.

[reply]
1. 9/09/09
  
  jp7feet
  
  mine is just a good, simple bowel movement. nothing like healthy plumbing to enhance production and performance. but don't go in there for a while.
9/08/09

HollytheHousewife

I like that analogy. What about the aftermath though? Nurturing,and growing...

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9/10/09

Hels

I asked my sister in law, a psychiatrist, for the Meaning of Life and of Blogging, Here is her analysis:

Blogging is like baking a cake. Sometimes it is undercooked, too moist, underdone, not enough information, shapeless and boring.

Sometimes it is overcooked, dry, derivative, friable, too technical.

But sometimes you get lucky.. it is just perfectly done. It has a good look, a good shape, a great aroma and you want your visitors to participate with gusto.

*sigh* she did 6 years of post-grad training for that?

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9/10/09

Maladjusted

All right, someone has to say this.

I'm going to say something fatuous and predictable: I think blogging is like love in all its silliness and joy.

First, a stirring: a vague, feeling that you don't quite trust, the equivalent of "she was nice...that gril the dancing eyes and the big smile et cetera". Then there's growing excitement, caution, disbelief, the warning in your head that says "let's not get too excited here, people", "should I really bother..." is this worth pursuing.

Then there's the exctiing bit: romance, passion, enthusiasm(you scribble furiously and end with a flourish.) Everyone screams the word 'yes', semi-orgasmically.

Then the trouble starts: you step back, take stock. You realise (with some horror) that there's a quotidian side to the whole deal that goes along with the romance, rapture and so on. Now you find yourself doing things that amount to... negotiating boundaries with each other, find that there are complexities to being together, you niggle at each other, quarrel, debate things, make plans, change plans, wonder where you should go for dinner and wonder what the two of you are doing (in blogging terms this is, of course, the editing phase)

In the niggling (editing) phase there's the potential for disappointment, doubt, moments of aridity (the feeling that maybe you shouldn't have done this, the worry that passion has faded and maybe won't be rekindled) So, more niggling, quarreling (editing!), accusing, but as the thing survives being niggled at a faith in it develops, a faith that it can endure ups and downs, that it can slide from the apogee of joy without having to be consigned to the dustbin of history. There's a trust, a comfort and familiarity with the thing, the belief that it can endure all the vagaries of life. This is the last phase: acceptance.

The post (relationship?) is is what it is, conceived in passion, moulded by time, patience, and endurance of difficulties. It may not be every moment the stuff that dreams are made of, but it has all the hallmarks of something born in dreams and in passion. Consequetnly, retains some of the features of such divine parents. You can see glimpses now and again of the inspiration that led you to come together and give birth to something (a child, a relationship, a shared project). Sometimes you look at it, and wonder whether it was worth the effort, and sometimes you decide that it wasn't. [This would be the equivalent of deleting the post, giving up on it.]

But mostly, you realise: hey, it may not be the best thing in the universe all the time, but it's still our thing. Not perfect, but something which transformed us, that we will later remember fondly as we say: I have done this, this happened to us, and we lived in the aftershock of the event, struggled with it, tried to make something of it. And this is what it is, or what it was.

Best,

Mal

[reply]
1. 9/12/09
  
  Hels
  
  "conceived in passion, moulded by time, patience and endurance of difficulties".... sounds like marriage
9/10/09

Halconite

Pleasure and pain. To quote Dean Koontz on writing a novel, "Sometimes it's like making love while having tooth pulled"...

[reply]
1. 9/10/09
  
  deviki
  
  I'm trying to picture it
  wow interesting !!! LOL