Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

I Hear Us Talking

As I wrote earlier, I started to blog in 2005. What my inspiration was then is just about impossible to recall, but l can guess it has a lot to do with my love of writing and the written word, with which I have a long emotional history, covering almost all of my life. Blogging, therefore, could very well be my way of serenading the writing life.

To me, a blog means owning up to my life by offering my experiences, my thoughts and my opinions. It also means recognizing the strengths and weaknesses in myself, as to imagination, humor, general knowledge and the memories that go with it.

Furthermore, I am inspired by other bloggers. What is going on inside other heads fascinate me as much as the people-watching I do in real life. Through blogging in a group, I am fortunate to become familiar with the several sides of blogger friends through their words, and these sides of them are offered freely. What can be more agreeable that that?

What is also favorable is, blogging doesn’t have to be a professional act bound by strict rules where content and style are in question. As bloggers we hold subjective views, and we are our own editors within the limits of accepted decorum but without a serious accountability to a superior, like a newspaper publisher.

Our blogs are what we want them to be, even when writing from prompts. Our blogs are personal and informal, and we all own the platform because, through blogging, amateurs and professionals both have their say, which is the right thing to do, as it is acknowledged by the freedom of speech clause in any free society’s constitution.

This brings to my mind what Isaac Asimov wrote as a fan mail to then young Carl Sagan: "You are my idea of a good writer because you have an unmannered style, and when I read what you write, I hear you talking."

The same rings true of the blogging in Writing.com. I hear myself and my blogging friends talking through our own, very personal writing styles.

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Prompt: What inspired you to Blog?