100 Bloggers Entry

Here's my submission to the 100 Bloggers project:

Being a principal in a firm called, “TrueTalk,” discovering blogging was like finding the holy grail.  Why?  For me, it's the “how” and “what” of blogging.

How Bloggers Blog

People write in real human tones on blogs.  Those who don’t, don’t get read or survive very long.  This was what attracted me most to the earliest blogs I read.  And it was what encouraged me to start my own blog in May, 2004. 

I thought I’d found a medium in which I could regularly express my ideas, and I was right.

I have a history of writing performance anxiety.  I’ve always been able to write, but have never had anything published.  I’ve made a couple of attempts at writing books but never completed them.  I’m sure there are lots of reasons behind these writing difficulties, but one of them has been “overthinking.” 

This is what I’d do to myself.  I’d begin writing something and say to myself, “hmm, I know others have written about this; let’s see what they’ve had to say.”  I’d then begin researching the idea, only to find that, just as I suspected, I was not the first one to have thought about this in human history (surprise!).  While I felt I had something to add to what had been written, I’d often find myself losing momentum as I’d write; my writing started to feel formal, stale, stilted. 

I’d “lose the plot,” as they say.

But when I began blogging, I discovered some important lessons about the form:

1. Blogging is about reacting to what others have to say – This was a revelation.  Writing in a medium in which the hyperlink is the lingua franca was liberating.  I found that I could read something, react to it, write about it, and publish it.  Boom.  That was it.  Done.  Felt great.


2. Writing begets writing – Every writer I’ve ever read said the same thing: if you want to become a writer, write.  Well, my blog became the place to write something just about every day.  After a few months, writing became easier, just as the experts said it would.


3. Spontaneous writing is different – Writers also speak of discovering their “voice” (you must be sick of hearing about that by now, right?) I found that the voice that emerged in my spontaneous writing sounded like me in everyday conversations: passionate, irreverent, insightful, witty.  I heard that voice in different keys when I read other blogs. Honest.  Opinionated.  Heartfelt.  It sounded like what we call “TrueTalk” in our firm.  Read Lileks and you’ll know what I mean.


4. Writing as interaction, not broadcasting – I found that people don’t just read blogs, they react to them.  I did, and so did they.  Active and involved, not passive and detached.  When people care, they let others know.  But blogging still has room to grow in this regard; the best newsgroup I ever subscribed to (which happened to be the one dedicated to the third season of “The Sopranos”) had far more interaction than any blog I’ve ever read.

What Bloggers Blog About

But blogging’s not just about “voice.”  All blogging is blogging about something; what we write about are things that matter.  Since there are about eight million blogs as I write this, it’s a little foolish to speak of “the content” of blogs.  But being foolish never stopped me before.

What I’ve found is that many, many blogs are about clearing the fog. 

Here’s what I mean.  Mass communication has existed for about 80 years.  OK, according to my new brain lobe, Wikipedia, the New York Times was first published on September 18, 1851, but that’s quibbling.  What I mean is, electronic mass communication developed very rapidly over the last half of the 20th century.  As it did, mass media owners and users developed a set of conventions, rules and expectations that gradually became part of the fabric of our everyday lives (what I came to call, “Penny Lane”).  We baby boomers expected “credible narrators” to be “Cronkitean,” for example. 

These developments were insidious, but nonetheless real; “And that’s the way it is.” 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Corporations then adopted these communication conventions, both in their messages to their customers (advertising) and to their employees (HR and corporate communication.)  A vocabulary and tone developed over time that typified the way companies spoke, or rather, “delivered their messages.”

Those messages were Official, Sanctioned, Authoritative. 

And most often, transparently Unreal. 

For me, (most of us?) listening to these messages was like walking into a dense fog.  The only thing that was clear was purpose of the fog: to obscure reality.

And, by the end of the 20th century, much of public discourse sounded like this foggy communication.  Gradually, we developed new expectations:

Nobody in a position of authority is ever going to say anything REAL. 

Nothing ever “FAILS.” 

Nobody ever gets “FIRED.” 

Nothing is ever “WRONG.”

We got used to hearing official communicators spouting nonsensical things in nonsensical words.  And most of us were sick of it.  But we didn’t have anyplace else to go.

Boom!!  Enter The Cluetrain Manifesto, and the blogosphere.

Searls, Weinberger, Locke and Levine blew the corporate communicative cover in Cluetrain with a simple proposition: “markets are conversations.”  And, guess what?  Real conversations sound different from authoro-corpo-speak.  Cluetrain's ninety-five tests for real conversations boiled down to this:  you know what real conversations are about, and how they should sound.

At the same time, new blogging tools made it possible for people of modest technical ability to say what they wanted to say how they wanted to say it.

And, bloggers have been piercing the fog ever since.

So what?

Well, news is now different.  Music is different.  Politics is different.  Sports is different.  Everything is different.

I know, that sounds like pre-bubble-kool-aid-speak. 

But it’s not. 

WHAT bloggers write about and HOW bloggers write has changed everything.

So, what makes blogging important for me is that all I have to do is open my RSS reader every morning and I am guaranteed to find interesting ways to look at the world – ideas that pierce the fog – written by people speaking to me in TrueTalk.

On my blog, I get to write about what they said, and about what I think. 

Others then read what I say, and make their own comments.

And off we go.

How cool is that?

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Tom: That's a great post, perfect for the 100 bloggers book. And I learnt more about you - including that you share the overthinking gene with me.

[Jon Strande]

Tom, to answer your question: That is VERY COOL!

Great piece! It'll be perfect for the book!

[Jane]

Great observations!

[Connie Sartain]

Below is an excerpt from Douglas Coupland's "Life After God" which speaks to the "why" of authentic conversation.

"[]"If you really think about it Scout, our bodies have no way of knowing where they begin and where they end. [An]immune system doesn't keep you healthy as much as it informs your body where its boundaries lie. Right now it's as if there's this hole that's tunneling through me, confusing my body about where I begin and end--the outside seeping into the inside. Just think of Swiss cheese--if the air holes get too big it stops being a Swiss cheese--it becomes, well...nothing. I guess that's what I feel is happening to me. I'm becoming nothing. And yeah, it scares me."

"Our conversations are never easy, but as I--we--get older, we are all finding that our conversations must be spoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling. Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to fee pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked our youth is itsef a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes."

Note from Connie: The author was twenty something when he wrote this.

[Tom Guarriello]

Thanks, Johnnie, Jon and Jane (man, the J's love me!)

Connie, that was a terrific comment, thanks. I love the notion that young people find sincerity, "pornographic." I think they mean this in an exhibitionistic sense, and I can relate to the sentiment. But heartfelt, non-flasher sincerity is what happens when we burn through the other stuff.

[Jeremy]

Can't wait to see the book, nice work Tom!
Just wanted to give you some more love from the J's!

[Connie Sartain]

I'm wondering what it will take to "burn through the other stuff" in the work environment. What kind of appeals motivate change. Generally, it takes a crises. Is this a group or individual issue? It seems both, but, doh. It's not as if people are happy with the "politics" of the workplace. But maybe they are - like continuing to tolerate nasty managers - you can feel superior. I've noticed people tend to bond around mistreatment by such managers. (the stockholm effect?)

Aha! What happens if you replace "politics" with "reationships" in terms of expectations? Would/do we tolerate - and I do mean tolerate - those kinds of relationships in our personal lives? Might be interesting to explore some parallels. Oops, just remembered your doing that earlier ... re Needy and marketing. And the six sigma conversation @ Colette's (sp) was about conversation as a new measure.

well, i do declare. something seems to have sunken in.