Blogging: A Creative Practice

Why Do I Write What I Do

Currently, my writing is almost exclusively blogging because it’s something I can actually do. Blog posts can be long and well-written, or short and sweet, or a caption, which makes them possible. I have written all my life in many different permutations, but blogging is the only form of writing that I have consistently done for years at a time and felt good about.

For 4Mothers, I write to express musings in my head, and sometimes a beat of my heart, as they seem to want to get out of the spaces from which they came. I also write for the comraderie, both the online community conversation around mothering, and the in-person friendship with my co-writers, who I love.

What am I Working On/Writing

I’m working on showing up. I’ve been blogging for five years (I also write a private blog), and sometimes my mind wanders, or it becomes tempting to think that maybe I don’t need to write these journal entries as much as I do. But blogging is a creative practice – and although it hasn’t led to more writing (yet), I’m quite sure it was an opening to a more creative, fulfilled, mindful life. I feel good a lot of the time, and I don’t want to take for granted the very practice that has enabled that.

How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre

Is blogging a genre…?

How does my writing process work?

Sometimes the words form involuntarily in my head and require release; sometimes I have to nudge them out. Mostly, for the journal writing that is blogging, I just write what I want and apart from some editing, I don’t fret about it too much. This is a lot different than the other writing I’ve done in the past, which involved a lot of hand-wringing.

I think that’s why I like blogging so much – it’s such a non-judgmental form of expression. I just thought of an analogy between the more formal modes of writing I’ve done and blogging: it’s like the difference between ballet, which I did when I was younger, and yoga, which I do now. Ballet was brilliant sometimes – putting all my concentration and mental and physical energy into my body and how it moved was all-encompassing. All striving, all Art. It also made me feel perpetually unsatisfactory; I never felt near to good enough and neither did anybody else. Now I practice – not do, but practice – yoga. It doesn’t have the sheen of dance, but it feels wonderful both during and after, promoting a sense of well-being as opposed to inadequacy. The focus isn’t on being good, but on being there. Like yoga, blogging helps me get “there”, where I want to be, and so I practice it.