Bookishness

For the past few weeks, I've been editing my blog postings into something I will publish as a book.

I could capitalize the word ("Book") to emphasize its importance, but just using the word adds a sense of formality and legitimacy to my writing enterprise. So I say it straightforwardly. Book.

I could be cute and create a new word--"blook"--to describe the marriage of book and blog, but, predictably, that trivializes the upcoming work, making it seem an even less worthy project than it already seems. The project's worth, needless to say, is already somewhat in question because of its direct relationship to a blog...and to busking. (Sorry, Gestating Creative Offspring, your lineage does not bode well.)

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Two years ago, I heard the word "blog" for the first time, and I thought, "yuck".

It didn't sound like something I'd want to read at all. Plus, I didn't know what it was, and I felt embarrassed about being out of the technological loop. Unlike some people, who may find such embarrassment motivational, I found myself curling up with a good old-fashioned book and shutting off my computer. Then one day, my husband (in his free time at 2:30 in the morning) set me up with my own blog, allowing me to express myself and "publish" at will without having to trouble myself by actually submitting my work to publications.

Thinking about the awfulness of the word itself, it makes me wonder whether blogs were invented as part of an evil plot by the Corporate Media to entrap the hordes of eager would-be-published writers, or at least to keep them very, very busy. Hasn't anyone noticed how much "the blog" sounds like "The Blob"?

"Blogger" also sounds suspiciously like "gobbler"--a devourer of time--and could be an in-joke among published authors who no doubt consider us turkeys. (I know of at least one writer who has successfully published--and been paid for--two articles on busking since I've been writing this blog.)

Like the world of independent music, in which inexpensive recording technology made it suddenly easy for anyone to become a recording artist, blogging has facilitated the free expression of ideas. But it hasn't erased the boundaries between what's considered professional and what's not. While some newspaper columnists may be nervous that bloggers might steal their jobs, I think that's less likely than the other scenario: that capable thinkers and writers (including much better ones that me) will remain bogged down in the blog ghetto, buried under all that crackpot ranting and poor punctuation, unable to rise above the label "amateur".

Okay, personal challenge time. Along with getting my book (BOOK!!!!!) ready for the printed page, I will select and edit a few articles for publication, submit them, and keep you posted.