Suw Charman in your ears

My chum Suw Charman was on Julian Worricker's BBC Radio Five Live show this morning talking about the world of blogging. It was a broad introduction to the blogging phenomenon that covered personal blogging, business blogging, journalism and political blogs in countries where freedom of speech is supressed.

You can listen to it online for the next week (as I did because I was still well in the land of nod when the show was broadcast this morning): Julian Worricker - Radio Five Live - Sunday 2 October.

One of the questions asked was why do people blog. I've been posting an online journal one way or another for nearly five years and I still don't know the answer to that. As a writer and composer, I am partly keeping my eye on the future and thinking that I can use this blog as a publicity tool in the unlikely event that I get anything published.

A point made on Julian's radio show was that some people use blogging as a convenient way of letting their family and friends informed of what they are up to like some kind of electronic conference call or virtual postcard. Other people use blogs to discuss very specific subjects (knitting is apparently a big blog subject at the moment). I don't blog for any of those reasons. I know a couple of friends occasionally swing by to read this drivel but my family don't - I don't think I'd want them to. And I never concentrate on one particular subject; I waffle on about any subject that happens to cross my mind.

A further point was the social aspect of blogging, the fact that people can comment and leave trackbacks to create a large "paper trail" back to your blog. I haven't really been using blog software long enough for that to happen (my old journal was all hand coded in HTML - I was a fool). I seem to have a few return visitors but nobody regularly leaves comments (come on... isn't anyone as excited as I am about the re-release of the original uncut Japanese version of Gojira (Godzilla)?).

Saira Khan, who presented the item on blogging on this morning's broadcast, asked this question on her own blog (which she set up with Suw's help to prepare for this morning's discussion). These are possible reasons I left in her comment box:

1. That writing a blog instead of buckling down to writing short stories or my long-gestating novel still counts as 'writing'. It doesn't, of course.


2. I have such a fascinating life that it would be verging on criminal to not share it with the world. It isn't, of course.


3. The knowledge that I have a public blog will make me feel obliged to update it often and therefore cajole me into paying great attention to the world around me so that I may find fodder for writing. It doesn't, of course.


4. That blogging is merely the latest medium through which I try to make sense of the world and my place in it. I am no closer to figuring that one out, of course.


5. Suw told me I should. Yeah, that's probably it.

Well, yes, I was in a funny mood when I wrote that but the point is... I don't know why I blog. I just like it, I guess.

On that highly ambiguous if not entirely unsatisfactory note I shall end this post to ponder the question some more. In the meantime, you can all look forward to reading my review of David Cronenberg's A History Of Violence once I get around to writing it.