Write For Yourself, Unless I Don't Like It
Yeah, this is another post about posting, sorry. I simply couldn’t help myself. I wrote about this phenomenon in I Don’t Blog Right, but I think back then I was seeing a different side of the blogosphere than I see now. I am, lethally, an optimist.
One thing I am seeing a lot in the blogosphere is the idea that bloggers owe you something with their writing. Proper grammar, posts that make sense, posts about certain topics or posts that are expected to avoid certain topics (“traumadumping” - God, I hate that term). Posts written palatably, acceptably, normally.
I don’t think that is very fair. People shouldn’t be expected to blog with the intention of pleasing others—or with the intention of being perceived by others at all. Yes, there is the argument that by putting it online, you are inviting criticism and you cannot control who sees your work… but why does that always have to be the defense? Why do we have to say "you should have to put up with anything anyone says about your posts, no matter how rude or unnecessary, simply because you decided to have a website for fun"? I would agree with this opinion more if blogging happened to be not blogging but rather an academic class…. this isn't the case though. Oh, but sorry, apparently that isn't a valid argument.
(I also have a memory of my Honors Composition I professor telling me that she once contemplated docking points on a paper for some lack of punctuation, but before doing so she decided to ask the student about the choice. It had been a personal narrative essay about a difficult experience, and this student had written I believe a single paragraph without using commas, just on and on. The student said: “I wrote it this way because that is how it felt in the moment. Like an uncontrollable, endless spiral that never stops or slows down.” And she understood, giving said student full points for the assignment.)
Blogging is intentionally nebulous, at least to me! Blogging is what you make of it. I said this in the aforementioned post in the form of viewpoints I have seen from others… but I realized that I am seeing less of those views now. So here I am saying it directly:
There is no wrong way to blog. Blogging can be personal, or it can be about a specific topic you're passionate about, or it can be about your work, or it can be about what your Sims did today. THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO EXPRESS YOURSELF (EXCEPT TO EXPRESS BIGOTRY) AND CONSIDERING BLOGGING IS A HIGHLY INDIVIDUALIZED PURSUIT, I EXPECT YOU TO BE YOU!! NOT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WANT YOU TO BE!!!!!
Some say that proper craft is just as important as self-expression with writing, and I posit that not everyone wants to write pristinely. In fact, I personally find myself enjoying writing that primarily prioritizes self-expression more than writing that focuses on clear-cut rules—especially in an age of AI "writing", when mistakes prove humanity. Both in blogging and in literature, I find that emotional impact is more important to me than how a story reads on a technical level. In literature I cannot really immerse myself in a story with dry prose, for example—it feels incomplete and superficial to me. I deeply enjoy stories with unconventional/experimental formatting and unique utilization of the literary device, and in blogging I do not expect people to follow rules of any sort. Published literature is different, but I think just about anything can be acceptable if you are intentional and specific in what you're trying to achieve by breaking convention.
One user writes, "Haste makes waste, or at least incomprehensible drivel. … If you want people to read what you have to say and think about your point of view then stating your case clearly is absolutely necessary." But this assumes the goal of writing is or should be the desire to be witnessed and understood, and I simply do not agree with that at all. I don't write because I want people to think of me as valid. I used to, but I'm moving away from that. I write because I have to write. I have to put words on paper; if I go too long without writing I am boiling myself alive. It's like sleep deprivation—you go long enough without sleeping and you eventually just lose consciousness—-if I go too long without writing I lose myself. Words are harmless opioids to me. I cannot write without writing, and to me writing is sometimes messy, and weird, and unpalatable. I do not have any interest in writing that tries to be palatable.
I also am uncomfortable with the use of terms such "intelligible" in these posts, as someone with a psychotic disorder that causes disorganized thinking. I write what I know, and my brain only knows disorganization. Is my point of view lesser simply because I struggle to write without heavy usage of metaphor and imagery? My brain thinks in abstract concepts. I cannot really think in a conventional sense. I write in the aforementioned post:
"When I think, I am either catching each thought like a snowflake on my tongue and letting it melt inward, herding the thoughts up like a sheepdog, or excavating them---I do not think in linear words like most others do, I approach thoughts as clusters of actions, like I have to collect or chew on or swallow or do Some Action To my thoughts before I can properly think them. I remember things like going up and down a hotel elevator; each year is a floor, each door a memory. I yearn like a scooping out."
This is how I am, and therefore it is how I write.
(Yet my first publication was my first ever submission. Interesting!)
Another user writes, "We're writing "our own thoughts,".... and doing so with the intention of being understood, using words whose definitions are known and grammatical conventions which exist for certain purposes. The subjectivity of writing is more akin to whether chocolate or vanilla cupcakes are better, not to whether cupcakes are better baked with sugar or cyanide." I just find that comparison to be extreme, ludicrous, and pretentious. Writing you do not understand isn't lethal or toxic. It is just writing!
A lot of these posts use "you don't have to read criticism" as the basis of their argument, and well… you also don't have to leave it. Your voice is not more important, more special, or more interesting than the voice of the author—-and attempting to insist so can lean heavily into classism and racism. Sarah Khan writes:
"I noticed a slew of people — whom I call language purists — suddenly coming to the defense of the English language as if it were in danger of a sudden demise rather than the powerful, omnipotent, contradictory colonial monster that it actually is… Putting aside the fact that this line of thought implies blindly following the rules and never stopping to consider whether they make sense or are even just, the point of any standardized language is so that there’s a baseline to which everyone speaking that language can refer when any confusion comes up. And that baseline is not set in stone — nothing about language is ever set in stone! The beauty of language is that it is so malleable and is perpetually evolving. If a language stops evolving, it dies (See: Latin!) English is like the colonial settler of language (unsurprisingly) in that it constantly takes from all other languages, claims the stolen parts as its own, and then has the audacity to say certain dialects aren’t “correct.” The whole damn language today is a mishmash of a variety of tongues and the grammatical rules vary from place to place and make little to no sense whatsoever. And don’t even get me started on some of the pronunciations of words in this mess of a language.
Too many people — including teachers, academics, editors and writers — believe things like slang and African American Vernacular English are abhorrent, not realizing that the latter has its own, distinct grammatical and syntactical rules (which often are more complex than that of standard English) and the former is a perfect way to see the language in flux. This dismissal of dialects spoken predominantly by people who are lower-income and/or BIPOC shows how language is used to not only dehumanize people but also to further dominate them. Insisting that standardized English is synonymous with “correct” English totally ignores the fact that not everyone has the privilege (or ability or even interest) to be able to learn the absurdities of this language. School systems across the world are not uniform and, often, only the wealthy can afford to ensure that they receive a top-tier education. And even those who do afford the best teachers may not always be able to take advantage of them. Developmental and learning disabilities are a reality and able-bodied, neurotypical folk don’t really make life easier by policing speech. Language purists seem to think that everyone is given the same opportunities and is born with the same abilities to take advantage of those opportunities."
I just… What is your intention when offering this criticism? What do you hope to achieve with it—change in someone else's personal blog posts? How is that not entitlement in and of itself? How is saying "And, inevitably, sometimes it [writing] means becoming discouraged and questioning whether you're good enough even to bother putting your fingers on the keyboard. That is good too." not incredibly rude and pretentious? Like, no, Christian Baby, suffering does not inherently invite salvation or progress. You can claim you care about "introspection" and "craft" all you want, but refusing to consider the person behind the writing does the writing itself a disservice; it would not exist without them! It is just fucking rude. Do we still care about being kind in 2026?