Why I Write (and Blog About Chocolate)

Guest Post by Bianca Garcia for Talking Writing

This essay began as an assignment in a magazine writing class but has evolved into something much more. It’s a riff on George Orwell’s and Joan Didion’s famous essays of the same name (without the chocolate). As Didion wrote in 1976, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”



In 2004, I started my first blog as an online journal to update my friends about what was going on in my life. It was very pink, very girly, but after a few years I grew tired of my cutesy online musings. I realized that I actually prefer writing long private emails and having phone conversations instead of a public narrative.

I also realized I like blogging and having regular readers. So in 2008, I started a new food blog called Confessions of a Chocoholic. My blog finally had a focus. My writing started to grow up—and so did I.

I write because I am opinionated. I want my voice to be heard. Whether I’m talking about my family or shoes or cupcakes or world peace, I want an outlet for expressing myself.

I write because I love to talk. My fingers may not type as fast as my mouth can speak (and never as fast my mind can think) but to me, writing is almost equal to talking. Sometimes it’s even better, because when I write, I can pause and think and edit. And spell-check.

I write because I want to document my thoughts, my experiences, my life. I write because it makes me think and it makes me remember. And I write because I want to learn. I want to learn more about the things I am writing about. I want to learn how many times I can use the word “about” correctly.

I write when I am bored and I have nothing else to do.

I write when I am stressed and I have too many things to do.

I write when I am sad. I write when I need to express frustrations and anger. I write because it helps me get in touch with my thoughts and “identify my feelings,” as Dr. Phil and Oprah might say.

I write when I am happy. I write when I am excited! I love being able to use an exclamation point! I write because it helps me expand my happiness multiple times by sharing it with others.

I write because it makes me feel good. And I want to get better at it.

Blogging has opened up a whole new world for me. Not only do I get to “talk” to my readers, but they talk back. While my childhood diary-keeping and early writing started off as very private endeavors, blogging keeps me exposed in a public domain. While I feel more vulnerable, I also feel more powerful.

I used to joke to my friends that I am the biggest word-of-mouth endorser. I like telling people about the things and places and food I enjoy. I like giving recommendations. I like acting as a “concierge” and having my opinion count as something. Blogging lets me do all those things in a bigger context. Especially now with the rise of social media, I can share my favorite finds not just on a blog post, but also as a tweet, a Facebook post, or a Digg entry.

This sort of publicity is exactly what marketers want to initiate and why some companies often reach out to bloggers. I work in social media and online marketing, so I understand the power of viral marketing.

However, I am much more of a foodie than a marketer, so I am inclined to try good, healthy, delicious-looking foods—regardless of where I heard about them or from whom (a fellow blogger, a sponsored ad). I have been fortunate to receive some food freebies myself, but when I do blog about it, I make sure to mention that I received it for free, “thanks to Brand X.”

I blog because it gives me a sense of community. It’s not just about publicity and getting free stuff, but about connecting with other bloggers and blog readers—or “bleeders” as Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame calls them.

I blog because it is social. Most of my readers are women bloggers, and we share the same interests. We eat the same things, watch the same TV shows, visit the same restaurants. If they’re not the same, we encourage each other to try new foods, shows, restaurants.

I blog because I like to endorse things I believe in—and to endorse other writers I believe in.

I blog because I love chocolate. I love the happiness-inducing moment when it melts in my mouth and the memories I create with every new sweet concoction. And I don’t just love chocolate–I love cookies too. And pasta. And pork. Although not at the same time.

I blog because it makes me feel good. And I want to get better at it.

I used to write about random topics or trivial things that I encounter. Now I put more thought and effort into my writing. I take more time, I do more research. I find that when I am writing about something I’m passionate about, my writing becomes better, smoother, more robust. I love how writing—and blogging—are not just about the activity; they are about remembering, learning, connecting, sharing. 


Bianca Garcia is a full-time advertising and media professional, and a part-time graduate student at Harvard University. She has worked for Leo Burnett, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Boston.com, and is currently a media planner at Overdrive Interactive. She blogs at Confessions of a Chocoholic and welcomes your comments. Bianca currently lives in Harvard Square, where she spends her days writing, running, and eating chocolate.

Why Writers Need Social Media

Guest Post by Jane Ward for Talking Writing


Writers write.  Straightforward, yes?  Not exactly. 

Some writers hold down part-or full-time jobs, have active roles in their communities, raise children.  Weekly loads of laundry are a given.  These days we also blog, Tweet, gather fans on Facebook, and insert key search words into our smartly designed websites, thus building marketing platforms.

For the most part—especially when it comes to marketing—the above depicts me, my life, and I admit to having days when I wonder: Well, how did I get here?

Actually, this question has been on my mind this week because both an aspiring writer and a local journalist contacted me to talk about my experiences with Twitter.  Me?  Talk about Twitter?  Eight months ago I was Twitter ignorant and content that way.  A little over a year ago I had no blog and no website. I had one Facebook friend (my hair stylist) who tried and tried in the face of my resistance to explain what wonderful connections Facebook could help me make.  I had little interest, I told him, and my Facebook account languished.  I couldn’t even be bothered to put up a profile picture.

My problem?  A very real fear of diving into the intertwined worlds of social media and self-promotion.  I found the idea of shouting my name loudly from so many public bullhorns frightening. 

Truly.  I’m not being coy here.  I know a few fiction writers, and nine-tenths of us want to let the writing speak for us because we are sort of shy.  We all burn with things to say but prefer to say those things from the mouths of our characters and not our own mouths.  The one writer I do know who has for years seemed entirely at ease with pitching herself makes me shake my head in amazement.  “I’m not that comfortable, I may never be that comfortable promoting myself,” I recall saying to another writer friend more than once. 

Now, it seems, I am that writer.  Or a version of her.  I blog.  I’m on Twitter where I have about 235 followers.  I have 76 Facebook friends.  I post links to my blog on both social media sites, bombarding these patient people with my work.  I no longer write with the sole purpose of finishing a work of fiction; rather, I work concurrently at the fiction and at building the platform so that I may have a shot at selling the latest finished work.  Why the change?

Everything has changed around me and my fellow writers.  I had to change.

The publishing world, certainly, has changed, become more revenue-driven since the days when the legendary Max Perkins fostered equally the careers of the well-known (Hemingway) and the lesser-known (Archie Binns, Pacific Northwest historical fiction writer).  While it has never been easy for a writer to be published, editors like Perkins once brought along their novice talents with patience, waiting for an author’s readership to grow with each successive book.

Editors still seek out talent, but it gets harder for them to justify waiting while a writer’s career gets a foothold.  Often if a first book doesn’t sell phenomenally well, an editor can’t persuade the publisher to gamble on book two, a book that may or may not do better in sales.  And in a dull economy the sales from a blockbuster entity may just carry a company through some dark times.  There are breaks to be had, but lesser-knowns and as-yet-unknowns usually need to market themselves assertively to make their big break into the well-known sphere.

The marketing effort itself has a different look, too.  Connecting directly with readers still matters, but it’s no longer done primarily through your novel.  With so many technological advances it has become both easier to connect—through emails, notices, e-zines, blogs, tweets, personal appearances—and more time-consuming to do so—it takes a lot of time to participate in each and every one of these arenas with dedication.

Time one could actually spend writing, oh, a novel, for example.

My journalist friend who was gathering information for his recent article on Twitter sent me the following questions: “I was wondering how Twitter has been helping you as an author.  Do you find it helpful?  Is it a distraction from actually writing?”

It can be, I have to answer.  See above.

But I have become a more organized and focused writer as a result, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Neither is the connection.  I have met other wonderful writers and food journalists who have offered me new venues for my work.  Here’s how I summed it up for my friend’s cousin, the aspiring romance novelist who was considering dipping her toe in the Twitter pool:

“Get on Twitter right away…search literary agent lists, romance and other writers lists…start following people…then look over the lists of their followers and follow some of them.  Soon you’ve got a good bunch you can keep an eye on and help.  With luck and effort, they'll start following back.

“Don’t be afraid of starting up conversations with anyone you have good instincts about.  I've found everyone is very, very friendly and genuinely interested in promoting, not only themselves, but you too, through their alliances with others.

“We all help each other become stronger and more widely read writers.”

We writers may work harder at selling ourselves than ever before, but each of us participating in this mix has found our modern-day Max Perkins.

Better, we have found our readers.  On our blogs, on Twitter, on the e-zines we are honored to contribute to.  Writers write, and we’re writing more every day as the world gets more technologically and economically complex.  We’re read in ways the writers before us couldn’t have imagined and in the end, that’s all that matters. 

Writers write.  But we need readers if we want to continue.  We’ve always had to find those readers one way or another.  It’s the same as it ever was.


This post originally appeared appeared as "Same As It Ever Was" on Jane's blog Food and Fiction.


The author of Hunger (Forge 2001) and The Mosaic Artist (to be released), Jane Ward is at work on her third novel, a weekly food and fiction blog, and a cookbook/memoir entitled Tattooed with Food.  She is also a contributing writer to the online food magazine Local In Season.

Publishers: Don't Just Lay Off Journalists—Execute Them

By Martha Nichols for Talking Writing

Here's my new favorite quote about the media revolution:

“One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs.... They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”

This sardonic valentine to print publishers comes from Alan Mutter, an ex-newspaper editor and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur.

He's quoted this week in a New York Times business story, "Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites." Mutter's dig about executing journalist-bloggers is at the end of the article, but I think it's the lead.

While magazine publishers dither about selling digital content, blogs are running away with the readers, and it's not clear that the brand-name glossies will ever recover. Partly it's because blogging is becoming a legitimate outlet for writers in desperate times. But it's also about vision—or more pointedly, the lack of vision demonstrated by big magazine publishers.

What is an online magazine, anyway? Does it really matter if it no longer resembles a print tome packed with slick ad spreads? Publishers are understandably obsessed by the money question, but focusing on pay schemes rather than content keeps them stuck in the visionless mud.

Times reporters Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango open with an evocative lead of their own:

Over more than a decade, consumers became accustomed to the sweet, steady flow of free news, pictures, videos and music on the Internet. Paying was for suckers and old fogeys. Content, like wild horses, wanted to be free.

They go on to say this sweet spot for readers will likely change in the coming year with various new pay models online for magazines and newspapers ("including this one," they write). But publishers are afraid to take the plunge.

The Times piece is well worth a read as a snap shot of an industry caught short and terrified. It evokes shivering publishers on an icy cliff, decked in nothing but polka-dot shorts, waiting for the first brave soul to dive into paid online content. It includes the requisite nod to the Wall Street Journal's payment model and fighting words from Rupert "quality content is not free" Murdoch.

Maybe magazine consumers will start paying, if forced. Part of me wants to believe that a new joint venture of publishing power players—Murdoch's News Corp., Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast, and Meredith—really will build a new "digital storefront" that entices readers to become electronic subscribers.

If only these publishers weren't so cynically out of step. I love magazines, and I want to see at least some of the big slicks thrive online. But watching publishers creep instead of fly into a new medium—then come on with belligerent business talk—is more than depressing.

It makes me root for the bloggers with nothing to lose. To paraphrase the management mags of the '90s, the world belongs to those nimble, entrepreneurial souls who aren't hypnotized by their own brand image.

This yet-to-be-named joint venture has been called Hulu or iTunes for magazines. By banding together, the publishing partners will supposedly hang tough on paid content and force the online world their way.

Yet the publishers seem far too wedded to online editions that are essentially digital analogues of print journals. The real innovation for magazines may come in consumers purchasing individual features or specialized content rather than entire journals.

Here's a wacky idea: What about subscribers at various payment levels, creating personalized versions of, say, the New Yorker? You, the consumer, choose which New Yorker content in a given issue you like and how you want it packaged (a digital version, print-on-demand, or both).

At level A, for example, you might get one feature of your choice, all the reviews, and no cartoons; at level B, you get three features, all the reviews, and cartoons + "Talk of the Town"; at level C, you get everything.

Or perhaps you can specify which channels you'd like (health, style, literary, politics) or which writers you want to read. Or maybe you can opt out of ads, going for text-only editions on electronic readers. The point is the freedom to choose is part of what you pay for. Rather than providing more content—more blogs, more lists of most popular articles, more podcasts and other online blips that clutter the screen—you get a manageable chunk of stuff you want.

I'm just riffing. I don't know how much of this is possible or feasible. Yet I do know that the New Yorker's experimental digital edition—click here for an opening shot—was simply an online version of the print magazine, a pain to navigate, and not the answer to magazine publishing's woes. It's an argument for the wonders of print magazines, not a new vision of how online magazines might make our reading lives better.

A glance at the Atlantic Wire, Atlantic Consumer Media's new aggregation of pundits and political commentary indicates another approach. According to editorial director Bob Cohn, as quoted in FishbowlNY:

"As readers face an overload of information and a deficit of free time, they can now visit one site to easily follow the topics they care about and the opinion-makers who fascinate them."

Will such online features get readers to pony up for the Atlantic proper? Possibly. The blogosphere is so crammed with political and social commentary, my eyes glaze at the notion of a site devoted to "opinion-makers." But I salute the effort to jump out of the print box.

For "newsosaur" Alan Mutter, producing good unique content is key. That could favor magazines like the New Yorker or the Atlantic, if their money people ever pay attention to who's actually reading the gold they already have. In a post titled "How to Charge for Online Content," Mutter writes:

The lesson here is not that free content trumps pay (though, all things being equal, it will) but that there has to be much more to a pay strategy than a publisher’s desire to want to be paid.

Which brings us back to all those journalists who are now blogging on their own dime and producing the kind of quality content that just might, possibly, I hope, net them, not Rupert Murdoch, an audience and financial support. Wouldn't it be nice if they had the last laugh?

This piece has been cross-posted on Open Salon.

The New Magazine: Blogazine or Magazog?

By Martha Nichols for Talking Writing

Why we're now calling TW a blogazine—and the ever-evolving world of first-person journalism. Do you think we've entered a new age for writers, or is it more of the same?


A few days ago, I thought I was particularly clever, dreaming up a new term for the hybrid blog-magazine that's now appearing all over the Web: magazog. That's it! I told myself, as I strode around the local reservoir, golden leaves fluttering down, the raw sticks of winter peeking through.

We professionals, I thought without a scrap of humility, will soon be working for online sites in which the writing is not just stream-of-consciousness crud. We won't just be generating free content, we'll be...zoggers??

All right. Forget magazog. I waded through another swirl of leaves. I played with the words in my head for a few more steps—b-zine (no, sounds like b-school), blozine (nosedrops? yuk), blogazine (yes! yes!)

Hubris is sometimes a wonderful thing. But there's nothing like a quick google to bring a dreamer down. When I got back from my walk, I found many entries for blogazine, a word that already has some currency.

I may have missed the blogazine blip, but what magazines are becoming has been much on my mind. It's a question I'll ask my students to research this spring in my magazine course. It's forcing me to revise my syllabus. After all, Malcolm Gladwell has a blog. Margaret Atwood has a blog. And what about everyone writing for free on Open Salon—with its tag of "You Make the Headlines—isn't that like a magazine?

Yet as radically as the industry has changed in the past year, some of the edgiest trends in magazine writing—the looser style, the subjectivity, the self-reflexive references—may not be so new at all.

One user at Urban Dictionary defines blogazine as an "online magazine/blog with thoughts and opinions that are researched unlike blogs." (Granted, if you check out the other links here, you'll notice lots of tongues in cheeks.) 

Readingaround Blogazine is described as "an online magazine of new work by independent writers and editors," and it actually has a very attractive, magaziney (but mercifully uncluttered) front "cover."

Phresh Mentality, a self-described "myspace photo album" that launched as an indie music blogazine this summer, calls itself  "a dynamic team focused on photography, design, and journalism."

"Journalism" and "research" often pop up in references to blogazines. The collaborative nature of these enterprises also distinguishes them from old-style blogs. And once you've got a list of contributors or "staff," you've entered magazine territory.

But except for the digital medium used, the shift from blogs to some form of online magazine isn't shockingly new. Blogs and blogazines are very much in line with the origin of print magazines. The term "magazine" (from the word for an ammunition cartridge or holder) was first used as a reference to the incendiary nature of opinion pieces.

The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, kicked off the use of "magazine" for a print journal with political commentary, cultural reviews, and a letters section that involves a back-and-forth with readers. The Preface to one volume notes that "whoever has perused the Gentleman's Magazines of this year" must be able to discern that:

"[W]e have a large number of ingenious and learned contributors, by whom many subjects, of the highest importance, are treated with accuracy, spirit and candour. Much the greater part of these contributors conceal themselves with such secrecy that we correspond only with them by the Magazine...."

The editor himself used a pseudonym—Sylvanus Urban—which would work just fine on Open Salon or other cyber sites where noms de plume are common. Political writers like Jonathan Swift and, most especially, Daniel Defoe would also have been right at home with today's blogs or blogazines. Defoe's Review so much resembled a blog that one academic project has set it up in that form for contemporary readers.

Then there's George Orwell, the patron saint of many feature-writing journalists, who had all the earmarks of an avid blogger. His given name was Eric Blair, but "George Orwell" allowed him to keep "the public from 'working magic' on him by knowing his true identity," notes Paul McHugh in a Washington Post travel piece about Orwell's island retreat on Jura.

(Side question: Would Orwell, ill with TB on that remote Scottish island and composing 1984, have written for free just to get his ideas out? Probably, but I'm not sure.)

Here's what I want to know: Has blogging changed more recent standards for journalistic magazine features? Are we getting more personal, more subjective? Is the first-person starting to trump?

This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it's potentially a profound change. The distinction between "hard" and "soft" news seems increasingly outmoded to me. I'm not arguing that we abandon good reporting practices; more than ever, feature writers need to verify facts, cultivate diverse sources, and make clear to readers where the information comes from.

Yet features in which writers inject themselves to good effect, giving readers entré to how reporters sift through facts and come to conclusions, may get us closer to multi-faceted reality. That's certainly true for trend stories or other features that rely on anecdotes.

Neil Swidey's latest article in the Boston Globe Magazine, "Why an iPhone Could Actually Be Good for Your 3-Year-Old," is a great example. He takes a hot-button topic (I must admit my first response was "Are you nuts?!") and makes a convincing case for something counterintuitive. Yet he doesn't do so by pretending objectivity or journalistic omniscience:

"I say this as someone who doesn't even like the iPhone. I have never worshipped at the altar of Jobs, and have, in fact, always preferred the dowdy PC.... But I can see how quickly our youngest daughter has become a pro with the device, despite being just 4 years old and unable to spell anything more than her name. She belongs to a new generation."

Swidey not only provides plenty of counterpoints to his claim, he also clues readers in to why what they say matters. Swidey writes that "for a reality check, I went to see Dr. Michael Rich," who runs the Center on Media and Child Health at a Boston hospital. Rich, predictably, talks about why smart phones for toddlers are worrisome. But Swidey adds:

"[H]ere's what makes Rich's perspective so valuable. In a field where some children's advocates view all media as bad while industry-bought voices speak only gee-whiz-ese, Rich opts for nuance. He rejects the notion that parents try to seal off their child from all media...."

Most readers know journalists have biases and that we're not completely objective observers. Instead of one's perspective being masked, in personally inflected features it's out there for all to see.

Ironically, the rise of first-person journalism, fueled by blogging and social-networking, may be dragging magazines right back to their roots—to all those gentlemen writers talking with such "accuracy and candour." (Or at least back to Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion.) You can see it on Open Salon, where so many gentlepeople fling ideas around with gusto, and with a quality that matches or surpasses much of what appears in print today.

So do we need a new word for magazine—or blog? Perhaps the only reason to push for blogazine and the like is a professional one: respect.

On another walk around the reservoir, the golden leaves still falling, here's a comment I overheard: "I'm still getting together my blog thing. Do you have an e-mail? I'll send it to you."

This speaker is obviously worried her "blog thing" will get no respect; it's not the equivalent of saying, for instance, "my article in the NY Times Magazine." But she follows up fast with "your email" and "send it to you," revealing just how much finding readers means to writers these days.

Sometimes I think the whirl of blogs and e-zines is the equivalent of a million tumbling autumn leaves. But I like the notion of collaboration versus the top-down masthead of print magazines. If that's what makes a blogazine different and "dynamic," I'm for it. I like the spirit of adventure, the potential for many editors rather than just a few guarding the gate to publication.

Call it the New-Old Journalism. Or the Old-New Magazine. Think of Daniel Defoe or Samuel Johnson, a regular contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine. They would have been thrilled to spread their ideas from pole to pole. If asked to create a new kind of magazine, they'd be learning HTML and how to create podcasts in the pubs of London. They'd be way past worrying about a drop in print ad sales—though they'd also be figuring out how to make some money.

This piece originally appeared on Open Salon as an Editor's Pick.

Corrections: A small error appeared in the block quote from the Gentleman's Magazine (an incorrect "of"); Paul McHugh's article appeared in the Washington Post, not the New York Times. These errors were corrected January 8, 2010.

This J-Student Ponders the Dollars and “Sense” of a New Career

Or How Not to Start at the Bottom When Your Birth Date Shows You’re Nearing “the Top”

Guest Post by Alex Speredelozzi for Talking Writing

Recently, I attended a career fair for journalists at Harvard University. Never mind that I didn’t know the fair was for young would-be interns, not middle-aged graduate students in journalism like myself looking to break into a second career. (How gullible am I to think that newspaper publishers would show up to offer jobs with checks?)

With newspapers bleeding black ink, one might think that few college students would show any interest in journalism. I recall that college for me was a time of idealism, but I thought today’s students were far more practical. Yet that didn’t seem to be the case at this Harvard career fair. There appeared to be no shortage of people interested in media careers. Which is a problem for us all—and especially for me.

My impression of student interest could have been skewed; the number of people might have looked larger because the room was small. I do know, however, that some students came not just from Harvard. One young woman told me she traveled all the way from Cornell University in New York with a group of like-minded students.

Granted, an internship at a newspaper is not only great experience for budding reporters but for those interested in law, government service, public relations, and a host of other professions. The investigative and writing skills are invaluable. But you have to admire the spunk of young people wanting to hurl themselves into an industry in financial disarray.

Maybe the reason for this enthusiasm was best expressed by a panel of veteran international journalists (all current Nieman Fellows) at the career fair. They agreed that there's no money in journalism. I wanted to know what motivates them each day.

“What do you get out of it?” I asked during the Q-and-A.

Their answer: the lifestyle, the excitement, the adrenalin rush. Gary Knight, photographer and editor with VII Photo Agency and Dispatches, couldn’t imagine another career. James Reynolds, China correspondent for the BBC, spoke fondly of flying into a country on an almost empty plane while people rushed to board planes leaving the country.

Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono of Zimbabwe, a documentary film director/news producer for Television International, smiled like a kid as he talked about using electronic image-transferring equipment that would have landed him in jail for five years if caught. Anita Snow, Havana bureau chief for the Associated Press, discussed the thrill (and difficulty) of opening a news bureau in Cuba.

These journalists relished the chance to meet and interview both influential people and everyday folks, and to report on crucial events that make history.

But what happens when you’re married with a family and the little eyes in your home look to you for bread and milk?

Even if you find a job as a journalist, it’s not clear how you secure fair pay. In the heyday of newspaper publishing, many owners raked it in but paid journalists only a weekly wage. Early on, reporters unionized to gain some leverage over employers, but unionization doesn’t build you a second home on a lake.

Except for a few stars, journalists get paid like other service employees that we value so much but pay so little: teachers, nurses, firefighters, librarians.

The panelists also agreed that to get and keep a job these days, journalists must know how to work with sound and pictures. Words alone won’t cut it. Though great writing and storytelling are the backbone of journalism, multimedia is the future. We’re a visual society, and we’ve been that way for decades. The technology that’s driving many of the changes in the journalism business is making multimedia the pencil-and-paper of the future.

Fine. I get it. But I have to say that just as the physical ability to put pen to paper never made anyone a writer, the fun of dropping and dragging on a screen won’t turn you into a multimedia expert. What makes a great story great, including one told via podcast, still relies on some old faithfuls: great characterization, great quotes, great story ideas, great reporting.

There’s also a more fundamental law to making it in journalism, at least financially, especially if you can’t afford to start at the bottom. Journalists must develop a niche unnoticed as yet by editors and valued by readers. They need to create a unique “product” and “brand” that can’t be easily replicated.

The buzz word is “specialization.” The journalism field has had specialists for years. But now it requires a higher level of intentionality. You need subject-matter expertise, and editors and readers need to associate your name automatically with that subject. The goal: Ensure that editors can’t hire anyone else to fill your shoes.

With an ample supply of journalists willing and able to cover a town meeting, a Bruce Springsteen concert, or the latest robbery, there’s no reason for publishers and editors to pay for content. Writing better than the next guy by itself doesn’t necessarily translate into higher pay. Sometimes “good-enough” is all that editors and publishers are willing to go for.

Unless, of course, they must come to you, and only you, to get the story.

My problem is that I don’t have a specialty. At heart, I’m a general-assignment reporter. My interests vary wide and far. I was attracted to writing and reporting because of the opportunity it offered to learn a little about a lot of things. So now, I must decide: Do I make a living in a different field and write on the side for pure enjoyment? Or do I develop a niche while also clearing a little space for those stories that widen my eyes? I’ll keep you posted.

You can see samples of my reporting at The Sun Chronicle.

Brainsick in Bloggerland: Certifiable or a Writer's Dream?

Guest Post by Paula L. Silici for Talking Writing


Is blogging making us mentally healthier—or the reverse?

Cyberspace is filled with well-written, thought-provoking blog sites. These bloggers clearly know what they’re doing. As a writer and editor, and especially as a fellow human being, I believe their posts enrich my world and make me proud of my profession.

Yet most of us have visited those “other” blog sites, too. You know the ones I mean: poorly written, poorly punctuated, rife with misspellings, and written by individuals who apparently find it liberating to post every banal detail of every waking moment. And here’s the kicker: most come with illustrative photos.

These “other” blog sites intrigue me. I wonder what motivates this second type of blogger to so publicly exhibit such intimacies. Even when the posts aren’t all that intimate, what would compel someone to while away several hours or more each day sitting at the computer emptying oneself out to an ambiguous audience who may or may not care? There must be a pay-off beyond monetary reward that I have yet to understand.

A sizeable amount of hubris is apparently a blogger necessity. I’m a wary blogger myself, barely touching a toe into the metaphorical whirlpool. I worry about the kind of false comfort this medium offers—especially to young people. Are we truly keeping in touch, or are we actually distancing ourselves farther from the human connections we seek?

I feel we're heading toward the latter, but I’d love to hear what others think. I’d especially like to hear from mental health professionals about the impact of blogging on their patients—positive, negative, or neutral.

Consider the following scenarios, one positive and one negative:

Scenario #1: A blogger I know casually and spoke to last weekend at a writers’ meeting raved about how wonderful blogging is. It thrilled her to know that others were reading her daily posts. It thrilled her even more that she was gaining a growing readership and that many had begun to regularly respond to her posts. Their comments gave her “a high like no other,” she claimed. She ended the conversation by stating that her blog validated her and confirmed her as a person of substance in a deeply profound way. People, she gushed, actually cared about what she had to say. She hoped to someday support her family by writing a successful blog.

All right. There’s something to be said for the dizzying gratification writers feel when a piece evokes an immediate response in others. Professional writers who have suffered the gut-blows of rejections by agents and publishers love the fact that they can now be in control of their work’s destiny. In spite of the current brutal publishing industry, audiences are able to instantly read and respond to an author’s work. This is a good thing, right? A healthy thing.

Then there’s the down side.

Scenario #2: I’ve talked to other bloggers who rarely, if ever, receive comments on their posts. Their reports, of course, aren’t so glowing. Full of hope, they began blogging out of a genuine desire to share with others who they are and what they think and feel. But when nobody responded, the rejection cut deep. One blogger I know, crushed by this experience, quit after only one week in the arena. He later told me he discussed this with his therapist.

There are other scenarios, too. Another blogger writes because, he says, it’s a cathartic, therapeutic experience. He doesn’t care if anyone comments. He simply loves the fact that he’s been provided a “really cool” platform to vent. (He blogs under a pseudonym.)

Oh, yes. And what about those bloggers who publish fictitious “true-life” experiences and post a bogus photo of themselves? Perhaps making up sensational stories that titillate readers is a means of transporting them beyond reality and into a fantasy world where anything and everything is possible. When readers respond to those posts favorably, it’s as if the blogger is given permission, indeed, encouragement, to continue the ruse. Healthy? Unhealthy? Hmmm.

The Internet allows us to visit blog sites anonymously. Hidden in the shadows of cyberspace, we can look through the windows of our monitors and act the voyeur. Blogs allow us into the sometimes outrageous, sometimes shocking, sometimes totally boring lives of others.

But when communicating online, we can no longer touch the person we’re communicating with. We can no longer look them in the eye or hear inflections in their tone of voice or witness the frown or smile on their faces. Yes, photos and videos can be posted; but still, we are once, twice, sometimes thrice removed.

Everyone wants to feel loved and accepted. We all want to feel that our opinions count. Blogging (and for that matter, FaceBook-type sites and Twittering) can provide a certain sense of belonging, a sense of community. Yet who are we kidding here? I know of people who begin first thing in the morning and spend countless hours blogging, reading, posting, and commenting. By doing so, they attempt to perpetuate those warm-fuzzy sensations of community and rightness and well-being. But an addiction is an addiction is an addiction. Any addiction that replaces reality with fantasy is bound to be unhealthy.

I shudder to imagine a lonely world where people no longer gather together in person to discuss issues important to them, or where heated conversations no longer end with a warm handshake or hug. Oh, wait! I-M the psychologist. We just may be there already.

WOMEN = BOOKS: A New Blog About Women's Books, Politics, and Life

By Martha Nichols for Talking Writing


I'm happy to announce that WOMEN = BOOKS, the new blog for the Women's Review of Books, is up and running. Check out the first contributor's post by Frances Kissling, "Blogging for Bottle Caps." Frances is a terrific writer and commentator at Salon and RH Reality Check, among other venues, and her piece about the value of blogging for professional writers should strike a chord with many of us toiling in the online world for little pay.

"Use it," she says, "it" being this new dynamic medium for columnists and other writers. Frances argues that blogs provide much more space to discuss ideas than the New York Times. You can publish whenever you want—no more biting your fingernails waiting for an editor to say yea or nay—and perhaps, most important, blogging allows writers to work out their ideas before diving into more complicated print features and opinion pieces.

The blurb for WOMEN = BOOKS follows. Help spread the word by sharing the link, joining the Facebook Group for the Women's Review of Books, and commenting on the blog.

WOMEN = BOOKS: The Women's Review of Books Blog

If ever there were a time for women to connect, it’s now. WOMEN = BOOKS will create an online community that can jump national and cultural boundaries. Women’s Review of Books has always been about jumping barriers: between feminist academics and political organizers, theory and practice. Now WOMEN = BOOKS will extend the print edition’s range, expanding its audience and the conversation about women’s books, politics, and life. The blog will include posts from selected reviewers and authors from each issue. Readers can comment, building a network for intelligent debate about everything from women in the military to abortion rights to childcare to sex trafficking. Blog comments will be moderated, making it a safe place for discussion of controversial topics. WOMEN = BOOKS will be the new go-to link for women’s studies and feminist organizing, using the power of social networking to help keep the women’s movement alive.

Join the conversation at WOMEN = BOOKS. We publish posts by contributing writers, with a new post every week. The blog is edited by Martha Nichols, a long-time contributing editor at WRB. If you would like to write for the blog, please contact Martha.

Can Blogs Be More Than Cute?

By Martha Nichols for Talking Writing



Here's what I'm resisting: That in my blog, I must turn my entire life into a story. That my family members are the cast of characters, complete with cute snapshots. That readers will be privy to all the details of my life--pictures of my foot surgery, my dog, my Uncle Fred--none of which exist, of course.

Actually, I think most bloggers are writing about their real lives, in both illuminating and eye-glazing ways. The relentless focus on reality is both the pleasure and pain of blogs, and I wonder where they're heading.

The Problem, #1
Keeping a diary has been around for eons. What's different is making that diary public--and making money (if you're lucky) from your nightly scribblings. Here's one of the latest from Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com, a six-figure professional blogger:

"And then five minutes later I feel another menstrual cramp. This goes on for, oh, seven hours? Eight? I can't remember, only that I was certain it meant that I was going to take an enormous crap. That's just my track record. During the last week that I was pregnant with Leta I thought I was going into labor three different times, and each time Jon would break out his watch and time the contractions, and we'd get all excited, like BABY BABY BABY, and then BOOM, I'd go take a poop and everything would stop."

So what's wrong with that? Nothing. Really. Writers need money. I need money. Except.... Heather Armstrong is a good writer, often funny. But most of the parenting blogs like this are too diary-like for me, too insufferably cute or self-conscious. I feel bad saying this, too, because as a feminist, I'm a believer in the power of quotidian details. I just don't want to see pictures of somebody's ultrasound.

I want a good, well-told story.

The Problem, #2
The gender flip on mom blogs is the often male-authored megaphone. It's an op-ed with Hunter Thompson's Disease. Here's a sample from John Batchelor of The Daily Beast:

"The sad-eyed Townhall Turfers now follow the saucer-eyed Birthers and the cranky Tea-Baggers as the latest political fad that the weakling Republicans not only cannot get away from but also cannot get enough of, like chocolate sauce on anything."

It's almost a zinger, almost so bad it's good. It did compel me to read farther, but after a post or two like this, even with great titles like "The GOP Freak Show," I feel exhausted. I become hypnotized by long strings of comments about Sarah Palin (for example), which alternate between wittily brilliant and Neanderthal. This is the blogosphere, and I'm still surprised that so many people type out their thoughts, anonymously, their ids run wild. Maybe it's the id-charge that keeps them doing it, like placing prank phone calls.

I want a good, well-told story.

Ode to Pleasure and Pain
There's something quaint about the proliferating lines of text with these comments, though. People love YouTube, but they love writing, too. They check in on each other's comments, they argue and quibble. They're engaged with each other's words. It's not about pictures, but text. And while I haven't figured out what's coming next for myself as a writer or whether I can turn my blog into a series of mini-stories--has anyone figured it out? have you?—I am writing, more than I have in a long time. In the shorthand of Dooce: It's cool.

Making the Transition from Print to Digital

By Judith Ross for Talking Writing



Just over two years ago I returned home after five days in the hospital to find a glossy paper life raft waiting for me. It was the January issue of House and Garden magazine. In my first week of recovery that issue provided many forms of entertainment. When I had the energy and focus to read, there was the always-delightful letter from the magazine’s editor, Dominique Browning, that paved the way for articles both short and long. When I was tired or sad and needed diversion, there were photographs of interesting interiors and gardens to peruse. When I was in the mood for both words and pictures there were photo captions and other details to take in.

That well-worn copy sits with about 24 others on a shelf in my home office, their colorful yet tasteful spines brightening the room. Sadly, there won’t be any more joining them. Like many of its kind, House and Garden is no more. Those of us who grew up knowing the excitement of finding a new National Geographic and/or New Yorker in the mailbox must adjust.

This weekend The New York Times ran a piece describing the launch party for Tina Brown’s Talk magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/business/media/03carr.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Talk%20magazine&st=cse. The piece describes the party as the end of an era rather than the christening of a “new era of media fabulousness” as had been intended.

Here we are. As a reader, I am sad.

As a writer, I am sad but excited. Digital media seems like an intriguing new country to explore. There are different customs to learn and another language to master. Yet given the digital world's many comings and goings, one has to wonder: What will stick and what will go away?

In addition, there are many questions about what online publishing means for writers. A newsletter I have contributed to for several years transitioned from print to online this past spring. In the process it has halved what it pays freelancers.

So dear readers and writers, where do we go from here?