Okay, I’ve been blogging now for almost 2 months. As a writer for a women’s health website, I have a tendency to report the facts, mainly from the 3rd person perspective. I research health topics and collect my sources to document at the end of the articles. I have journalistic instincts in my blood (probably dates back to college, where I wrote plenty of papers towards an English degree.) I learned how to write from the opposing view (playing devil’s advocate?) I even wrote a (very bad) screen play! But blogging for the public eye……This is quite new.
What I’ve learned so far from this experience is that I am still quite a journalist and my site is a bit of a hybrid. I like to think of it as a website with a blog format. My husband Bill is the website development nerd: he knows how to create them with HTML, Frontpage (a formatting device), search engine optimization, and reciprocal linking. I am more of the creative force, concerning myself with the writing, photo selection, internal linking, and commenting. Together we’ve created a website which happens to have a blogging format— WordPress. A couple of times I’ve had to tone down his entrepreneurial instincts with the plea, “It’s a website, but it’s about a personal topic— people’s health.”
That said, I’ve actually found blogging to be a cathartic activity. I’ve posted at MS message boards before, under the anonymity of a user name. Here, my MS story is open and available to many people— strangers, loved ones, new blogging acquaintances. It is a place to drop some guard and post what’s really on my mind. Yet the journalist in me still tugs in the direction of business. So a hybrid website it is. A touch of personal with a dash of unbiased journalism. And of course, search engine optimization….
What I’ve found and liked in others’ multiple sclerosis blogs are the real, raw emotions. I’ve (slowly) read a few other sites and have found them so open and honest. Writers blog about their symptoms, their limitations, their strengths, and their frustrations (usually towards the health care industry.) I’ve read some poignant poetry, some gratitude lists, a bit of news about the gay and lesbian communities, and rants about the US’s sh-tty health system and insurance industry (and Canada’s more universal coverage— Michael Moore: you were right!) I think one of the most touching blogs is one in which the writer vents but does not comment or link to others. Almost a private diary, but with the benefit of letting others listen.
So I think I’ll always have a bit of the journalist’s eye, deciding on key word density and internal links that make articles and blogs easier to find in a search engine. Can’t help it. My other health site’s pretty much brainwashed me into doing this! But I’ve learned from other MS bloggers the joy and freedom of letting down some guard and writing from the gut. For such reads, it’s good to start at the MS Carnival of Bloggers homepage, where you will find links to many bloggers and their personal MS stories.
To wrap things up, I like to think of a blog as a loose-leaf notebook, with many pages in chronological order. Now, imagine opening up that notebook on a windy day. You’re maybe trying to remove a page from the binder, and whoa!—- they start flying out everywhere. But think of a person stumbling upon one of those pages and being touched by what you wrote. Another person comes across a tattered page, found on the street many miles away. Blogging is like sending out pages of a private notebook to the wind. No matter what the format (journalistic, personal, ranting, prayerful), the end result is touching a complete stranger’s life and making them feel a connection.
