On the Poor Writing Found on Most Personal Websites, and the Few Shining Exceptions

5-31-2023

As I have not written an article for this website in nearly five months, I have no pedestal from which to complain about the poor state of writing found on most personal websites. Nevertheless, I will anyway. In my defense, the reason for my neglect here is the amount of effort I have been expending on my other websites. I have spread myself far too thinly. I have no excuse for this, but I do want to clarify one point before continuing. I have no intention of ever abandoning this website. Though I may sometimes write infrequently here, I see no reason to kick a website to the curb where I write only for my own enjoyment because I have no agenda or goal except to write whatever I like. I do enjoy writing, and that is extremely unlikely to change. Fear not, dear reader, I shall return--though perhaps not soon. (So, please turn down the frequency with which your RSS feed readers ping this site to a handful a day or less so that I am not forced to ban you to free up the piddly bandwidth that my ISP allots to me!) I am learning that running two blogs and three small forums (and writing nearly 20,000 lines of PHP code for one over the last 13 months) takes up rather large amounts of my time. Insomnia makes this easier than it would otherwise be.

To get back to the topic of this article, I was recently reminded once again of the contrast between the poor state of writing on most personal websites and the best. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not complain because I dislike personal websites or think that they are of little value. On the contrary, I love them. I feel that the ultimate future of the Internet rests largely on the shoulders of personal websites and personally-hosted social media. Clearly the corporate-run Internet is degenerating fast. So, what else do we have left to look to as our digital communications savior but the non-corporate web? When I am too exhausted to write or code, I often peruse favorite personal blogs or search for new ones. Usually, my searches yield rather poor results, but on rare occasions I find a sparkling gem. In fact, one of these has prompted me to write this article today.

I should preface what I will say next by pointing out that even though I am allowing the world to read this, I doubt that the person I am writing about will ever see it. These kinds of articles (my favorites) never get much attention, so I feel more comfortable in shamelessly praising her. As I said, this website is where I write whatever I want, and little of it usually gets further than the handful of people who read this blog regularly. And I do mean handful.

I was especially lucky a few weeks ago to find the website of a brilliant young woman who has made 15 years of her writing public. She began writing the contents of Conscience Round at the age of 14. Even back then, her love of writing is clear for all to see. I often wonder if some of us are simply born with innate abilities that are programmed into our DNA, abilities that we could not resist developing even if we wanted. Her terse "About" page contains little more than the words, "My name is Emma. I like writing. Also people, in general. Not much else to add." Fortunately, her website is filled with observations about her life which she has been generous enough to share with complete strangers on the Internet. Here are a few of her most recent lines,

Often I wish that I had natural singing talent, because I think the chalky, malodorous melancholia which I am prone to writing would be more palatable in the form of lyrics.

When I hear that my last grandparent has died, news that arrives to me thirdhand, I feel a single note rise out of my body. It bubbles out of the skin of my chest and bursts in the air. The note is limp, subdued, like the mewl of a dying hare, its pink-ringed eyes caught between the gasp of curved fangs.

Try to ignore her self-deprecation and the understandably inaccurate metaphor in her last sentence. Despite what one would think, having heard the heart-stopping death-scream of a rabbit, I can relate that it is anything but subdued. Nevertheless, saying that Emma is an excellent writer is like saying winters in Antarctica tend to be a bit nippy. I am not a bit ashamed to say that her writing puts mine to shame. I have never met anyone who as a teenager used words like "crepuscular" in a way that seemed so natural. This is not merely someone showing off for an audience. In fact, I get the impression from the contents of her website that Emma writes entirely for herself simply because she enjoys it. Why she has decided to put her writing on the Internet, I can only guess, but I am very glad she has.

From everything I have gathered through my perusal of her website so far, I understand that Emma is not a "professional writer"--at least, not in the sense one would normally mean by that phrase. But, she should be. She should be writing books that rival the best literature we have today. Unfortunately, many of us have fatal flaws that leave us forever earthbound, when but for a different life experience here or a personality quirk there, we would be soaring with the eagles. I do not know Emma's flaws, nor would I take it upon myself to publicly psychoanalyze her if I had a clue. Perhaps, she simply has no interest in the type of writing that could have made her the next Jane Austin or Emily Bronte. Perhaps she feels that intentionally writing for an audience would deprive her of the pleasure of stringing words together for no other reason. If that is the case, I can understand. Why should she give up something that brings her happiness in exchange for fame, which I believe she is intelligent enough to understand never can? We have no right to demand anything from Emma that she does not wish to give.

Unfortunately, Emma's writing, the rest of the Internet is not. By criticizing most non-professional bloggers for their poor writing, I do not mean to imply that those with inadequate skills should not be putting their words on the Internet. They absolutely should! Every good writer understands that the only way to become a good writer is to write constantly. And for most of us writing a personal blog is undoubtedly better than writing in a paper journal or diary for our eyes alone, if for no other reason than it forces us out of embarrassment to take greater pains to polish our writing.

My greatest criticism of personal blogs is that their writers do not write long enough or consistently enough to become good. Consequently, the Internet is overflowing with blogs of no more than three or four articles that go nowhere. I have started calling these zombie blogs, because although they are dead, they seem to hang around forever. I keep bumping my shins against them in the darkest reaches of the Internet while looking for the best blogs like Emma's. I don't know what to say to these writers except don't give up so easily. Keep writing. Hoping that they will, I will keep bumping my shins until I find something that they have produced after years of effort that is uniquely their own.

I add the best blogs I find to my RSS feed reader and wait with anticipation. Unfortunately, I often discover over time that despite a few excellent articles, most good writers only produce content that excites me from time to time. Most of their writing is on topics that I find boring or that I am already too familiar with to be interested by. This means my search for engaging and stimulating writing is a constant struggle. My blogs probably produce the same response from many of my readers. Emma's writing is one of the few exceptions that I have found, because she is talented enough to render appealing nearly everything she writes. Unfortunately, I have little advice for other readers who are also scouring the Internet daily. All I can say is that I intend to keep looking for all the good content I can find from wherever I can find it.

--Tie