Meg muses about blogging!

For my younger readers:

Do you keep a diary? I used to as a young person – in fact, I still have them in a box hidden away. I suspect they would be very embarrassing to read now! I’m not sure how worth keeping they were. Sometimes it felt like a chore keeping one – at other times, it was really therapeutic.

The reason I raise this now is that, this week, I’m musing on the whole concept of blogging which I plunged into without knowing much about – and blogging can be just keeping a diary on line. That’s not what I do. For me, a diary would be very personal and I wouldn’t want to put out that sort of information on the web – and so I muse or rant instead. I very much enjoy writing for an audience – and I can’t imagine an audience being interested in the small detail of my life!

There are so many reasons for writing – I’ve just mentioned a few here. Are you a writer? What does it for you?

For my more wrinkly readers:

Time to pause for a moment and consider this whole blogging business. I have been wondering in the last few weeks why I am doing it – well, I have been wondering from the start why anyone does it, actually! I’m not a blog reader so I have plunged in ignorantly, possibly where angels fear to tread! To have a web-site is, these days, expected of a writer – to keep a blog is supposed to make it ‘sticky’ and is another way of widening your profile. But does it really? Or is it, as a friend heard on a TV programme recently, ‘Something losers put on line so everyone can read.’

I can tell from my web stats and the occasional e-mail that I’m getting more readers than appears from the posts – but my audience is not huge – so I’m wondering whether I should carry on. When I started off, I had to consider carefully what sort of blog I would write. I didn’t want to write a diary – might as well watch paint dry – and I didn’t want to put out lots of personal information. I also had to be careful of the content because I may have young readers, parents of my readers and other gate-keepers of children’s fiction such as librarians and teachers. I also have an urge to be an activist – to try to change the world for the better in whatever small ways I can – and I don’t have much free time for demonstrations, lobbying or acts of civil disobedience. I do try to fund-raise in small ways for the various charities I support and I do, every so often, organise slightly off-the-wall events – last year’s effort was a study day on alternative and green funerals, this year’s will be setting up a Soul Space as an aid to reflection and meditation on Maunday Thursday at my church, Castle Hill Baptist in Warwick. (You’re very welcome to come and use it – e-mail me for times nearer Easter.) The blog seemed like another theatre for activism. I myself am impressed and changed by articles and books I read – so my hope was that other people may be too. Or if not changed, supported in what they already believed. It’s so lovely to read something to which you can say, ‘Yes – me too!’ Sometimes it can feel very lonely sticking to your principles, especially if they feel pretty quirky!

But maybe this is really all a waste of time and I’d be better off doing my ironing and watching a DVD – or at least writing a letter to my MP! (Bless him – James Plaskitt is very diligent – I just wish he’d send me a postcard every so often saying, ‘Yes, Meg, I couldn’t agree more’ rather than a massive envelope stuffed with the latest Green Paper or committee report on the topic!)

So you tell me. How valuable is this? How valuable is blogging in general? Should I be writing a different sort of blog? My inter-active fictional blog for my character Kate might be a better one for me to pursue, seeing as I write for children – and so far it has only three entries. Fans of my Christmas quiz might be interested in something lighter – heavens, there’s enough goes on in this house – like this………………………

The boiler has died. It’s been on the blink ever since we moved in and has been the subject of much gloomy speculation from Roy, Prophet of Boiler Doom, who has visited regularly to fix it. On his last visit, it took several attempts to fix and so much sighing I thought Roy himself might expire.

‘If it goes again, that’ll be it, love,’ said Roy.

‘How much will it cost?’

Roy shook his head sadly. ‘Oh very, very dear,’ he said. ‘Very, very, very dear.’

‘Oh well. I’ll hope not to see you again then,’ I said.

Aagh! Cut out my tongue! Famous last words. Well, mine to him. Imagine my dismay when, the boiler having breathed its last, instead of grumpy old Roy, handsome young Mark came to fit a new one. (Oh, OK, dismay may be an exaggeration….)

‘Oh – where’s Roy?’ I said.

Mark shook his head sadly and patted the dead boiler. ‘Didn’t you hear what happened? He’s not with us any more.’

I thought he meant Roy had changed companies – or retired. But no! Roy, Prophet of Boiler Doom, had pre-deceased our boiler by a couple of weeks. Gulp.

He would have had a field day with what happened next. The new boiler was not straightforward to fit. Fuses kept shorting, fitters got shocks, at one stage there were four fitters and one electrician infesting my kitchen. It all took four days rather than two, with the temperature dropping all the time and snow forecast. And then water started spurting out of the study wall – it turned out there was a nail (probably put there by us when we moved in!) straight into a heating pipe! So then we needed a succession of builders and plumbers and the fitters back again. I can just imagine Roy sighing heavily, shaking his head and telling me gloomily that it was all going to be very, very, very dear.


So you tell me. What do you want from this blog? Ranting? Musing? Humour? Nothing?
If you don’t want to write a post, send me an e-mail. You can use contact Meg on my web-site front page or use meg4ever@greenbee.net

Thanks – I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be doing something completely different next Wednesday evening!