For Whom Do You Write?

This post is “prompted” in part thoughts I’ve wanted to share for a while on blogging, and pensivity101‘s Truthful Tuesday prompt about blogging prompts felt like an opportune time* to finally write this. This is very meta.

*Yes, I’m aware that this was the Truthful Tuesday prompt from well over a week ago. I’ll come back to this point.

What I Like About Blog Prompts

1) Inspiration & Nudge

Lately, I’ve been in something of a blog-identity crisis. I lack the time and motivation to write the kind of Jewish-related content I originally intended to write here, there are only so many life non-updates and rants I can post here before I get sick of myself. I don’t always have either

1. the ability or mental/emotional capacity to turn life frustrations into humor, music, or poetry or
2. the desire to be so brutally honest and vulnerable on my blog.

And I’m kinda over writing poetry at the moment. I find myself wanting to write something, but it’s hard to pinpoint what.

Prompts, like The Autistic Composter‘s Questions Over Coffee that I recently discovered, have been good for inspiring me to write something when I don’t quite know what it is that I want to say. And sometimes, prompts provide that inspiration for a piece that may have been ruminating, but maybe I didn’t find the right hook yet. Like this post of thoughts I wanted to share about Jewish community was prompted by one of Fandango‘s Provocative Questions – and it’s since become the basis for the whole pond/community/housing search tortured analogy saga. Prompts can provide both the inspiration for something I never expected to write and the necessary nudge to write something that were already ruminating.

Sometimes the prompt is the spark I didn’t know I needed. Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash

2) Sometimes, They Allow Me To Pleasantly Surprise Myself

I wrote poetry pre-blog and attended poetry workshops with renowned teachers pre-blog, and, at the risk of sounding conceited, I knew I was pretty good at writing poetry. This blog was never intended to be a poetry blog – I had offline poetry communities and I didn’t need validation that I could write poetry well.

But I couldn’t help but notice the wide variety of poetry prompts in the blog world. So, I started participating. And to be honest, I really expected this to be more poetry “muscle-stretching” vs. creation of work I’m truly proud of, if that makes sense.

But, I’ve been really impressed with some of my own prompt-response poetry. To the point where I’m almost mad I participated in these prompts by publishing on my own blog because it means I can’t pursue submission and publication under my real name.

I’ve written poetry that I surprised myself by writing in the first place by responding to prompts on my anonymous non-poetry blog that is so good that I’m kinda mad at myself for posting it. Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

3) Community-Building

I think the sense of community is probably the greatest strength of a well-run prompt. Look, the internet is a big, lonely place. Blogging helps build community. Prompts can create a sense of community rituals and norms. It’s been fascinating to see the way bloggers will show up for each other, even within the simple forum of a prompt response. And it’s incredible to see how a prompt “ritual” goes beyond that, like when fellow bloggers share sad news with other prompt participants who respond with tributes and memories.

To be clear, I think blogging without prompts can build community as well. But if you imagine the blog world as a religious community (bear with me), while you absolutely can and should socialize with fellow congregants outside of regularly scheduled services, some members will really appreciate the regular weekly meeting times to connect with their fellow congregants.

Stay with me; I’m going to come back to the blogging as religious community metaphor. Photo by Ferdie Balean: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-on-service-in-temple-5452329/

What I Don’t Like About Prompts

Fair warning – lots of potentially unpopular opinions ahead!

1) There Are Prompts That I Just Don’t Like

There are prompts that just don’t speak to me because I’m not the target audience. For example (out of respect for the organizers, I won’t link because I am being somewhat negative):

• Throwback Thursdays – because a) I’m not old enough to have interesting answers, and b) as an anonymous blogger, there’s a limit to how much I want to talk about where and how I grew up.
• PAD/A-to-Z challenge, SeptSceneWriMo, Bloganuary, and anything requiring daily participation for an extended period of time – because I don’t blog daily and have no interest in doing so.
• Tanka Tuesdays or anything that focuses on poetry form – because I’m not that interested in form poetry.
• Any short story/flash fiction prompts – because I don’t write short story or flash fiction.

But look, that’s just life. Not everything is going to appeal to everyone and that’s ok.

I also think there are prompts that really don’t work well. There’s a lot I love about dVerse, but I think their Prosery prompts are their least successful. Making someone take a 10-word awkward line and use it verbatim in a 144-word piece is dictating a good 7% of the final piece, and actually more because it’s so hard to add any creative context when you can’t break up or change the prompt line at all. I’ve done this before and while I don’t necessarily dislike the resulting pieces, I feel like the prompt responses from both from myself and other bloggers, are generally not as good compared to other prompt response pieces. (Btw, all the links in this paragraph including that marked as “not as good” are my own work; I’m not going to publicly critique another blogger’s work here.)

I’ll be honest: I think some of my prompt-response poetry is B- or worse. “Bad grade” by Steven Vance is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

2) The Illusion Of Engagement

Per my previous point, I do think prompts can build a sense of community. But I also think that prompts can build an illusion of engagement as well. Posts written in response to prompts will drive up my stats, but how much of that is people actually interested in me/my writing and how much is people seeking reciprocity for me to respond to their prompt posts? The increase in stats due to prompt participation isn’t a true measure of increased engagement with my blog.

If we go back to the blogging-as-religious-community metaphor, you could think of prompts as the weekly religious services when everyone comes together. You’ll see more people at services and talk to more people afterwards when you exchange a metaphorical “Shabbat shalom” to them over kiddush (do non-Jewish religious services also serve food afterwards?) but are you really making more friends or building closer friendships? Then there’s also the timeliness of response as a factor. I’m tagging the Truthful Tuesday prompt to credit the inspiration for this post, but since I’m responding over a week late (life got in the way…) absolutely no one is going to actually read this post via the prompt. That’s just life.

Honestly, maybe that’s just reality. As Wynne Leon expressed on Wise & Shine, follower stats aren’t a great measure of engagement or community. Not all of our followers will care about everything we say. And even in blogging where we create more community through prompts, not all of our fellow prompt participants are going to be interested in our other writings. To go back to the religious community metaphor, some of these prompt participation connections will never go beyond a “Shabbat shalom” over kiddush, and that’s fine.

Maybe we’ll just be bloggers who only meet weekly over bagels and that’s ok. Photo by Lucie Liz from Pexels

3) Insularity

Let’s do a thought exercise: Imagine that someone who doesn’t know you, who has never heard of WordPress or Blogger or anything, and who doesn’t have a blog, manages to type a magical string of words into a search engine and somehow stumble upon your blog prompt post.

(I know, right? How incredible would that be if our SEO efforts actually worked!?!)

Back to the exercise, imagine that someone with absolutely no context has landed on your blog prompt post – would they have any idea of what the prompt is and how to participate? Would your post make them feel as they too could join the prompt?

There are blog prompts that make me feel like that random person on the outside without context. I’m not going to link because my feedback is a bit critical, but,

• I have no idea how to do the MLMM Wordle – Do you have to use all the words or some of them? How many? Poem or prose? (And I’m even more confused about other MLMM prompts like Friday Faithfuls or Saturday Mix – what does that even mean?)
• I feel stupidly confused about the A-to-Z challenge – what exactly is the topic?
• And even for prompts where the directions seem pretty straightforward, there are prompts where I question if I am entirely welcome. For example, can I post in a Go Dog Go Promote Yourself Monday if I’m not otherwise that active in the Go Dog Go community?

I’m not blaming the prompt organizers or participants – no reason to not use tags or not keep repeating the rules if everyone already knows the drill! But this means that there are prompts that can feel quite insular.

Rationally, I know this probably isn’t the case, but there are blog prompts that make me feel like an outsider. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

For Whom Do You Write?

To me, all of this points back to the larger question of for whom do you write. For yourself? For your community/friends? For the world at large? Maybe we write for different people at different times or maybe we write for all of them.

I’ll offer some thought on writing for each of them:

Writing For Yourself

If you write for yourself, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want if it feels authentic to you. And I wrote “fuck” intentionally to make a point – profanity is authentic to me and my blog, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that I use it. There are readers who don’t like profanity, and that’s fine. And there are bloggers who avoid profanity for the comfort of their readers, and that’s fine too. For me, writing authentically for myself means using profanity at times.

Also, if you aren’t writing for yourself, you really should be. The reality is that almost none of us will become famous or make any real money from blogging, so you might as well write for yourself in addition to whomever else you’re writing for. If, in the course of blogging and responding to prompts, you don’t feel like you’re writing for yourself, it might be a sign to take a step back and figure out how to incorporate prompts in a way that feels more authentic to you.

Don’t forget to also write for you. Photo by Nicolas Messifet on Unsplash

Writing For Your Community

I get the “blogging as religious community” metaphor may seem weird and unflattering to an atheist blogger, but I want to be clear – I think community, blog community and religious community (which often goes beyond mere religious observance) is a good thing. The world is a big place. Communities help us create spaces where we feel at home. A huge portion of my life is spent actively participating in a religious community; when I liken blogging to a religious community (because it’s the type of community I am most familiar with), it’s a compliment and credit to the blogging community.

I see value in participating in prompts if it speaks to you, similar to how I think there’s value in attending weekly religious services. But I also think there’s value in checking out a fellow blogger’s off-prompt post every so often. And I get it – as readers, we have limited time to read, like, and comment, and frankly, we’re not necessarily interested in every post that another blogger writes. Hell, there are plenty of times that I don’t even manage to read fellow prompt participant responses. But if prompts are the “Shabbat shalom” greeting after services, reading other bloggers’ off-prompt posts are the conversations you have other times of the week.

We don’t only have to talk once a week. Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Writing For The World At Large

Let’s be honest – public blog or not, the world at large is not actively reading my blog or your blog or anyone else’s. But if you are writing for an audience outside of the WordPress community familiar with the prompts, make the prompts more accessible to an outsider. Post the rules somewhere conspicuous (looking at you, MLMM!) Post titles of #prompttags without context do not make for a post that makes sense to someone not in the loop. If blogging is a religious community, ask yourself if the doors are as open to visitors and newcomers as they should be.

The world probably isn’t reading your blog. The question is (assuming you want the world to read your blog in the first place) if the world did read it, would the world feel welcome? Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

If this long-winded post of potentially unpopular opinions prompted any thoughts, drop a comment. And yes, pun absolutely intended.