commentary optional

Of Sealing Wax, Ad Specs and Other Things April 10, 2016

Commentary Optional is a bookend blog to another blog, Sleeping at Noon. That latter blog was intended as a creative non-fiction site pulled from my journals.

I thought perhaps in Commentary Optional to have a place where I might comment (or not) to concerns raised in Sleeping at Noon, and proffer the later view of an older observer.

That particular idea never got off the ground.

When I needed a spot to create URLs for images needed for my online portfolios, I thought to create a new blog that would house them, and remembered this blog, which had been sitting in the dark corners of the Internet, unneeded and unknown.

Imagine my surprise when it became visible (and I mean by that, not hidden still in the dark corners), right from the get-go, and observed. WordPress has a built-in marketing system that other sites I have blogged under do not, and how they handle getting the word out about your blogs is quite a nice plus. Several years back, in fact, I had other blogs on WordPress, one of which was developing a small following.

The advertising that WordPress inserted into my blogs, however, angered me: I returned my blogs to another host. I left the two bookends at WordPress, largely untended and unread (and because of that, unmarred by any loss in their status as ad-free sites).

I have blogged under three or four noms de plume. Isobel’s primary blog (I am accustomed to thinking of the different characters my creative imp plays in the third person) is an art blog at Tumblr. We Must Live as though the City Had Eyes  began as a literary blog, and gradually morphed into art. 

Because Commentary Optional has been noticed, however, and has followers, I am considering continuing with it, and posting notes on writing (and perhaps art).

As an unpublished writer, who completely falls off the train (and I will devote a future post to that very topic) whenever my words are returned to me, I remain leery of posting work at any of my blogs that is from my ‘to be published’ cache.

For whatever else can be said about possibilities with blogs—and the continuing process of American letters (and the separate inroads being made into the press and art worlds) to adapt to this new world of self-published work—the older process of ‘not self-published’ goes through an approval system that vets product in a way we usually are less willing to vet ourselves.

(And yes, I know. Many got their start in becoming Velveteen Rabbit Real through what was called a vanity press; others established their own printing houses, and got past the gate in that way. Too, blogging continues to gain in ratings, as it matures, in the worlds that are so set on having a vetting process in place: after all, it is not going to go away. Most literary journals that allow work that has been ‘blogged,’ however, do so because self-published still lacks the credibility that serious literary work requires.

And those that do respect blogging as a form of publication (which it indeed is) will not re-publish blogged work. So if your road to success in writing is literary, be sure that diverging into blogging won’t interfere with the process.

And yes, I know that literary journals at large now have websites, and post work from recent issues therein—and that some literary journals are completely online now. This is not the same as the self-publishing of blogging, however.)

In the world of blogging, ‘success’ can well be said to be determined by readership. As a woman who blogged with smaller caches of readership, however, I can affirm that readership (or lack thereof) will not always be a proving point of worth.

The final ‘proof point’ for all of us is what survives past our brief hour—and as we know, the later view changes, frequently, our ideas about the inherent worth (or genius) of a work: a Casablanca paradigm will always be the reminder that what seems mere Grade B reveals its excellence after its hour is past.

I don’t know how much time I will have to try blogging again, but I know that most of what I intend to proffer here is already written anyway, and will merely (as if mereness were all that were required!) involve pulling from my files and/or correspondence.

My ambivalence toward blogging does remain, but who knows where this venture might take my other blogs…

Or that work I still regard as ‘serious,’ and real…

That ambivalence, however, does not interfere with my gratitude to those other writers who are reading here. A most heartfelt thank you to all who have liked and/or are following this blog.

[Typos corrected 12 April 2016.]