The over-share, train-wreck writing, what you had for lunch and the madcap antics of your cat.
The mundane, in the hands of artists, is wrenching. In the hands of diarists, it is compelling. In the hands of bloggers…well, let’s just say the barrier to entry is low.
***
That is what we say, right? We turn up our noses at wildly personal blogs: Dooce, Penelope Trunk, The Pioneer Woman.
Wildly popular and profitable blogs. By women. Whose lives, of course, are trivial. Who needs to read about babies and breastfeeding and business and sex and miscarriages and marriage? We should be talking about big things, like life, its meaning, and how to live it. Ahem.
And so…the “over-share” which is not intimacy (agreed). But train-wrecks?
Was Anais Nin a train wreck?
Maybe. But she was an artist and a tiny, doe-eyed challenge inscribed right through contemporary writing. If you write about sex, love, art or intimacy, you’ve read Anais Nin – or you should.
Her art was her life. She beat the drum of minutiae until it sang thematically and wailed archetypal tales.
She lived and wrote her life. Every last detail. She cried, she lied, she loved, and she pried poetry out of it all.
***
I’m a trainwreck writer and proud mistress of the over-share. I broadcast my decisions and indecision and mistakes and – from time to time – little bits of universal light that look a lot like learning.
I call this toggling.
Toggling, to me, in this way, is the day-to-dayness of survival justaposed against my existential angst: that inner voice who just won’t shut up.
Toggling makes me less dictatorial about shoulds and oughts and ought nots. It allows for uneven-ness, broken pavement, and different terrains. It lets me to be large and contain multitudes even in the most mundane of moments.
Toggling doesn’t require leveling. It seeks different levels and bounces between them. Ctl/tab/ personal/political/unique/universal. Balance is unnecessary. Instead, there is a symmetry in unbalance. There is freedom – even truth – found in the movements in and out of those spaces.
Toggling isn’t just about blogging. It is a life practice.
****
cleavage. sex, money and meaning.
You’re on topic until you start talking about… never mind, not going there. Holly went there, so I don’t have to.
Wait ’til you get a load of this coming Saturday Morning Surfing. Already written. Synchronicity.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:12 am
@Dave Doolin, re: “already written”. I like to call my up-until-midnight-every-day method “just in time delivery.”
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Hi Kelly,
I’ve put you in my RSS for safe keeping. I’ll be back.
Long time listener, first time caller.
I love your blog. To me it celebrates the Western culture ideals of freedom of expression and empowering all us women. Yes, I know that I’m a man, but I have X-chromosomes, too.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:10 am
@Gordie, you make me laugh. consistently. You can totally play, too. Thanks for de-lurking. I appreciate it.
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kelly,
You always get me thinking first thing in the morning. I think how you talk about life is how a person sees life. And if life for that person is breastfeeding, babies, and sex (or lack thereof) that is what they will write about. If life for them is single and sexing it up with different dudes then that is what they will write about….maybe if they are brave.. But everyone is trying to figure out their own meaning in life and what that meaning is will come out most likely in their toggling (love that word). And people I think read blogs based on what they are looking for. Some want info, some want meaningless fun crap, some want something different. I subscribe to you blog because I love your take on things and the way you write. But I also follow some other blogs that are definitely fluffy and not as thought provoking.
Thanks for getting my brain working this early in the morning.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 7:40 am
@This Mama Works It!, I’m not sure, but was it clear that I am sooooo ‘yay write about your life’? And that I was being a bit sarcastic about criticism of Penelope Trunk and Dooce?
Because I think that women, writing about their lives, is important. And I think that the female stuff that gets dismissed as trivial is actually The Stuff of Life and intensely important.
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I have sites where I write about life and sites where I don’t.
The sites where I write about life are a lot more fun.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
@Sean Platt, preaching to the choir baby. ‘Cept I’ve just got this one site (for now – give me a month or two…) so it ALL goes here.
[Reply]
Sean Platt
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
@Kelly Diels, Well, you’re just way more disciplined than I am. I throw up sites only slightly less often than gang signs. (I realize you don’t know where I live so you can’t have any idea how super funny that is).
Worst thing ever is when I’m drunk. Because when I’m drunk, every idea I have is BRILLIANT! Which explains my thirty some unused domain names.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
@Sean Platt, oh I have the same domain problem as you, and so does Jenny from workinonaramp. We both go kinda red in the face if you ask us how many domains we have registered. I sometimes register titles of blog posts as domains, just in case I ever want to develop that idea into something. Red Shoe Blogger. That’s all mine, baby. You can’t have it.
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oh gods. and goddesses. brava.
i came here to comment on your ’snowed into sex’ post which i’ve been thinking about since yesterday, and then fell equally in love with this one.
there’s more than one way to ‘give value’ and ‘educate’, and information isn’t always delivered in neat little packages (or meant to be). it can be messy. and intuitive. and deep. and telling stories remains one of the oldest ‘teaching’ methods known to humankind (and stories themselves form one of the basic freaking food groups). truth rocks all the harder when charged with emotion.
blogging is about connecting. and relating. and WRITING (as in: the joys of prose, of language). there should absolutely be a blog-genre of the personal. of blog as living memoir. we look into others to see ourselves (and vice versa) and to know and feel we’re not alone. so it’s been interesting to watch ‘the personal’ get bleached out of this idea of what blogging is ’supposed’ to be.
recently read a survey of bloggers that surprised not only me but the person who took it: two thirds of bloggers were male. the systems, philosophies, strategies, whatever, of blogging that have evolved in the last couple of years, then, have been (are being) filtered through that male perspective, which is not known for being comfortable with, or interested in, or even seeing the point, of the overshare. which is not the fault of guys — it just is what it is — but neither should it be inscribed as blogging Law…
and this whole idea that the personal automatically equals bad art — that the personal makes art artless — is of course bullshit, and annoys me just as much as this idea that self-expression automatically equals art. to take something personal and make it relevant to others — make it resonate — requires skill and craft and magic. (JUST BECAUSE IT HAPPENED TO YOU DOESN”T MAKE IT INTERESTING.) most bloggers aren’t up to the challenge, so of course it works for them to trivialize the ones who are.
anais nin would have been one hell of a blogger.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
@Justine Musk, you rock. I e-mailed you that, already, but had to publicly declare my affection, too. xoxoxoxo
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My favorite blogs are always the personal. Maybe it is because that is how I write mine, but I prefer the authenticity.
There is something compelling about these personal stories of tragedy and triumph that tends to outshine the advice and business blogs for me.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
@Jack, there’s an old saw that says we do business with people we like. I find that’s true – the people who hire me to write for them come by way of this blog. This blog tells them exactly who I am, and they screen themselves in. That means they’re a hot dose of awesome and we can’t wait to work with each other. I LOVE personal.
[Reply]
Jack
replied:
on January 30th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
@Kelly Diels, Blogging is where you make friends by reaching out to click someone.
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Hallelujah – or however you spell that. It’s true. And as you know, I did some of this on my blog the last two days. It was a leap – and so far so good. Reality, it’s what’s for dinner.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
@Juile Roads, I think that is a fridge magnet just dying to get stuck. “Reality, it’s what’s for dinner.”
love your naked pics btw. So proud of you. In the name of art!
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Toggle away, I say!
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Your toggling is your greatest gift from my point of view. Perhaps we all need a little more toggle… myself included.
I think toggling takes courage, even from over here where I sit in ‘the safe zone’ I applaud your toggle dear Kelly.
Perhaps I too will one day be able to toggle along with the best of you.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
@Shannon | Confessions of a Loving Wife, It is getting harder and harder for me. When no one was reading, it is plenty easy to get raw. Now that y’all are here, I get a little nervous. I’m working on the courage thing. I’ll keep working on it.
thanks for talking to me Shannon – here, and on Twitter. I appreciate it.
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I think this is the first time I’ve commented. I came over here after your excellent break all the blogging rules post on Problogger. I have trouble with the personal vs. professional on my blog because the two mix together. Plus I’m a storyteller, which means everything in some way is personal. This post helps a lot. It gives me room to be both and realize that that my life is just that: MY life. “Professional” and “personal” are two of the many aspects and my blog can accomodate them. Toggling is going to become part of my vocabulary.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
@Shawna R. B. Atteberry, I can’t even describe how that feels to me – that you would take toggling and make it yours. Thank you so much. I’ll be checking you out. xo
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Thank you for putting a word to a practice I observe in myself … I’m so glad to know WHAT it is. I’ve taken some heated criticism for the “oversharing” and candor on my blog, but I find it a useful way to understand my own feelings and thoughts. And intermittently, I find minutiae really lovely too – and adore your characterization of Anais Nin. I think the really excellent writers are the ones who, like a pinhole camera, can take a tiny pinprick and through it see the entire world.
[Reply]
Kelly Diels
replied:
on January 27th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
@Lindsey, I was specifically thinking about your http://www.adesignsovast.com when I was writing this. I was thinking about how you take moments of your life and turn them into meditations about larger concepts that confront us all: vulnerability. safety. meaning.
You do this with fiction, too. The way you write about writing – well, I would read anything you recommend.
adore ya, Lindsey. SO glad you came by.
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