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| Want to keep me quiet? Get me some of these. |
When I was coaching a women’s soccer team (eons ago), one of the players (who is still a good friend of mine) gave me a Chupa Chup before the game. I was touched, until she said “It’s to give you something to suck on so you shut up while we’re playing.”
It worked. Anyone who knows me well knows I can get very long-winded, especially when I get onto a topic I love.
I’m passionate about a lot of things, and I probably have an opinion on most things, which makes me a very interesting party guest. Especially if I’ve had a few beers. But I digress.
Personal Me is currently in discussions with Writer Me about this blogging deal. Truth is, I’m over it, and it’s not hard to figure out why. I’m trying to get down to the bottom of who I am in order to distil the “Essence of Me”, which is supposed to then allow me to decide what I want to blog about.
In order to build a platform for my writing (as opposed to me), I need to work out my niche (which I’ve found), and work out who my potential readers are (which I’m working on). I need to post things that would be of interest to them, and not get overly personal, because they want to connect with what I say, rather than me personally.
And they want to know I can write.
Makes perfect sense.
The problem? The stuff that I’m passionate about at this point in time doesn’t really over lap with my writing. Which means I feel like I’m splitting myself in two here. Since that’s pretty bloody uncomfortable, my two halves are trying to come to a compromise.
Personal Me wants to talk (ok, rant and rave) about gay marriage, politics, sport, beer, you know, all that fun and controversial stuff. A lot of the stuff might not be of interest to my potential readers, but it’s interesting to me. And I love writing about that stuff too.
Writer Me wants to talk about books and writing and other fun lesbian stuff. All the stuff that might appeal to my potential readers.
Both Me’s love the blogging platform. A big part of why I love writing is that I seem to be able to express myself better in the written word, which then makes me able to express it better to people when I talk about things.
I don’t want to come across as some sort of activist or raving looney to potential readers though, because my writing is different to that.
I’ve tried just posting comments on websites, news sites and other blogs, but the long-winded part of me wants to go on and on and on, until someone shoves a Chupa Chup into my mouth to shut me up.
I feel hamstrung by the restrictions I need to place on myself in order to build my writer platform, and it hurts. I’ve banned myself from the internet a couple of times until I can come up with a post related to my platform, rather than a rant about something totally unrelated to what I write.
I don’t want to hate this platform, because I need it to make Writer Me’s work viable. But I don’t want to restrict what I talk about because Personal Me takes great pride in being interested in all sorts of stuff.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to re-brand this blog. It’s where I’ll blog whenever I have something to say and there’ll be no restrictions on content. This is where you get the raw, unadulterated me. There may be times when there’ll be a crossover because I’ll want to talk about a book or movie that will also be of interest to Writer Me.
But mostly, this will be me, straight-up. Well, not straight, but you know what I mean.
Sometimes what I write will interest you, sometimes it won’t.
But here’s the key. What links everything together is my voice – the way I write stuff. I write like I talk – for the most part – so what you see here is basically what you’d hear if I were talking directly to you. My voice is the rope that keeps Personal Me and Writer Me tethered at the hips.
So, I get to write about whatever the hell I want, with the proviso that I write it in my voice and stop trying to cram myself into a writer box that doesn’t go with the colour of my eyes.
I get to kill two birds with one stone – I get to keep Personal Me and Writer Me happy, and hopefully they start to play nice again and let me get the hell on with my writing.
So, without further ado, welcome to the new, improved blog – “The Shit I Know”.
Why the change in title? I’ll tell you all about that in my next post……..
Photo courtesy of Vivian Bedoya
2 Comments
I like your beer posts.
For beer lovers, and for the beer-curious, I think your beer posts would make a great stand-alone blog. And companion facebook page. If you wanted to have a stand-alone beer blog. And companion facebook page. Oh, and maybe a column in the Sunday Mail.
I like your sports posts.
Though, you don’t write about sport nearly as often as you do about beer. Sports and beer is a popular pairing. So you could do a sports and beer blog. Call it, say, “Speer and Borts”? Or, “Dehydrate and Rehydrate”? Or just simply, “Sunday Sesh”?
I like your gay rights posts.
Well, I like gay rights. And gays. And well, rights. With any luck marriage in Australia will be for any two consenting adults, regardless of their gender, and you won’t need to write about it anymore. But there will always be more beer to try. And more sport to comment on.
Most of all, I like your posts about writing.
About what you want to do. About what you’re doing. About what you’ve done. I don’t know why, but I do.
Best wishes with the re-branding. I can relate to the conundrum of multiple interests and whether to put fences around them or let them graize together.
You haven’t asked for my 2 cents, but here it is: Develop the Beer Shit (possibly with a Sport Shit tie-in) in a separate blog (which you can always link from your Gay Rights Shit and your Writing Shit if you want).
Best wishes with your works of fiction.
Thanks for your comment, Anon. Always happy for input. It’s hard keeping a handle on the shit, but there’s so much of it, I may as well do something useful with it.
I love doing the beer blogs – not least because I’ve discovered some great beers. Can’t wait to get them started again.
And there’s so much other interesting shit going on it’s hard not to want to blog about it. What did we ever do without the internet?
Feel free to stop by and offer up your 2 cents worth any time.
Cheers,
SR