Another Blog About Blogging

Author: Cheryl Perry

People have things to say. They think deep philosophical thoughts. They ooze the love of god or seething hatred. Some just want to tell you their good news. Others have found the best way to write a memoir (cook a chicken, hammer a nail, raise a child) and simply must blog about it! People want to say what’s on their minds. I’m no different. Those who know me have the knowledge that I am no shrinking violet and will yammer on over just about anything. But I am one of those people who want to get it right, spell it plainly, write the story and get a response. I think, therefore I blog–to keep from being bored.

When I first came to Asheville, I had nothing to do but unpack and hang the art on the walls. I looked for a job because I have worked since I was a sophomore in high school and did not know what else to do. When no job offers came crashing into my inbox, I floundered, then fell back on an activity which has always entertained me. Writing. Since I had been in a band called Bad Ethel, I decided to keep Ethel going. Especially after I saw the handwriting on the wall–the literal back wall of 728 Haywood Road, where the graffitti reads “Ethel Lives.” Since I launched the blog Living With Ethel, I have seen the name Ethel on many other enterprises both online and on the sides of buildings. I picked a good one, but I still had to write something.

Shortly after my foray into blogging, I decided I needed other writers around me who would understand my word mongering and act as a support group. At least once a month. I joined a few writing groups, but failed to connect because they were all serious about their endeavors, and I was, well…not. After grilling other folks within my social circles, I gathered a few of my sistren (not kidding you–this is the female equivalent to brethren) aka sisters who also piddled around with writing. Some are actually more serious, but enjoy the sisterhood and writing practices we hold once a month despite (or maybe because of) the absurdity that sometimes erupts. We became a cooperative of women writers which someone in our group dubbed The Scribble Sisters. The name stuck as did the fun and intensity of a solid group of women sharing what needs to come out of us onto our notebooks/computers and with each other. I am grateful for them every day.

Back to blogging. I am not technically inclined, so I paid someone to set up my personal blog on Word Press and off I went after a few hours of instruction by my magnificent tech goddess Dawn. I worship the ground she emails me on. Getting started, the hardest part for me was narrowing down all the stuff I had to say and choosing what order it would be published in. I had a backlog. That lasted about a year. I also asked fellow writers to do my editing as I felt my stuff needed to have clear eyes and judgement without malice. That lasted about two years. I got to the point where I was writing the blog piece the day before I planned to post it, so sending it off to be scrutinized by an impartial person became not doable. I was on my own from then on.

I wrote daily back at the start. At first, I hurled out my words like an active volcano, a regular pyroclastic blast of espression. It was an itch that needed to be scratched in my own erratic way and prose poured forth like hot lava. Then my volcano reached peak eruption and began to settle into a steady flow, which kept me busy for the next few years. Like all good volcanos, I began to build new fertile ground on which to grow my verbal crop. It was truly a labor of love to transform the machinations of my mind into a readable format that I could share online.

Writing a blog once a week for five years has emptied out a bunch of thoughts I had been storing in the old internal circus for quite some time. There was no other way for me to get it all out, so blogging has served me well. But the whole process began to feel like a job after those five years of labor, so I decided to just write when the spirit hits me instead of sitting down to write something, anything, just to get a post out on Tuesday. I’m enjoying the process once again since I can wait until I have an adventure to relay or a gem of an idea strikes me as comical or horrible or blog-worthy. I also have this Scribble Sisters blog with which to unload the junk accumulating in the cerebral attic–inhabited by spiders and cobwebs mostly, yet even those can be spun into one of my quirky reads.

So, readers and writers, this blogging stuff has been an adventure and will continue to be as long as I find the treasure at the end of the rainbow or some such fantastical nonsense. I invite you to join in. Start a writers group of your own, practice playing with words, start your own blog or a group blog so that you don’t feel you have to write all the time! I’m sure you have something to say. Get going you!