I owned a blog. It was my personal online diary. I spilled all my emotions into the blog. The only space on the world wide web that was, which I believed, reserved for me was my blog. It bore my name, my characteristics, and my personality. My blog belonged to me!
I always maintained a low profile regarding my blog. I would regularly check my stats to confirm that no one was prying into my life through my blog. The road was all clear!
My diary became more and more popular with me. I would post my every single life detail in it. I would occasionally go back and read my posts and contemplate about who I was!
It was so comforting to know I had a pal who would reflect my thoughts and express them in my own words.
But very soon my blog travelled across borders and people read more about me. They liked my posts and the reasoning which went into writing those. They understood my emotions, my psyche. They heard the cries of a tender heart safely wrapped within a strong body and a tough character.
The more the followers accumulated the less personal my diary became. For few months I even gave up writing. But something within me said, “Aren’t you an inspiration to the many bloggers out there, who will learn the art of writing only if they imitate you?”
Not unlike others, I too started looking at my blog as a piece of art, one that can be appreciated only by those who have fine aesthetic sense and one which will be a classic people will yearn to read.
My pride soon hardened the soft core within me. My writing became much more stylized and my vocabulary more profound. My blog looked less like a blog and more like an online novel.
I hoped to get more audience, more followers and more feedback. Paradoxically, I lost out on my existing audience and followers. I could not comprehend how such a phenomenon could occur. I tried harder each day to make my text more flowery than before, but every time my efforts to restore my lost glory went in vain!
Ultimately, the blog that I earlier nurtured with so much care was left alone to wither away. I stopped writing for it any longer. My enthusiasm for writing had gone. After meeting such a failure who would care to write anyway; and for whom?
Today I’m looking at my redundant blog once again and I’m contemplating about who I was and what became of me!
Aha. Fazilat, you have just hit upon the eternal dilemma of the writer. Should you write for yourself or for your audience?
ReplyDeleteI find that it depends on the 'Why' in the equation. Do you write for yourself? As catharsis? Or do you write to be read. Perhaps there can be a mix of both, but for you to write inspirational work, you need to feel the writing from within. And then the followers will grow because they know that what you say comes from a space they cannot see or touch. Write for yourself first. Everything will fall into place then.
Good work.
Riya