A couple of comments from Jen and Elaine (welcome back, Elaine!) on my recent post regarding blogging vs. "real" writing have crystallized something I was groping for in that post when I said, and I quote myself: "Blogging, for me, is a creative outlet and a satisfying mode of self expression as well as a potentially powerful means of communication."

Jen writes, among other things: ". . .a blog is all of it: an exercise, a motivation, a distraction, a venue for "serious" work, a venue for play, a way to connect, to share the venom or the love."

Elaine succinctly adds : "I believe that writing begets more writing."

I agree with each of these comments completely. The notion that my efforts at this blog (meaning the material I type in here fresh from my head, not the poetry and whatnot that was created elsewhere and imported here) are less worthy than the stuff I type into a Word document or scrawl into a notebook is, perhaps, unnecessarily dichotomous thinking. Certainly, most of the direct to blog content of this space has not undergone the same critical processes I employ in what I earlier referred to as my "real" work. This, I suppose, is one reason why I might think less of my direct to blog product and find myself inclined to consider it separate from my other writing endeavors (which I do, incidentally, showcase here on a regular basis).

But, as Jen and Elaine so sagely point out, there need be no distinction between the two. The writing I do here might, for instance, be considered "priming the pump" if nothing else. Indeed, I have very recently (as if to illustrate Jen and Elaine's respective points) been musing upon the possibility of expanding upon some of that direct to blog content. I have found a couple of the impromptu vignettes I occasionally feature in this space (this one and, more recently, this one) occupying shadowy corners of my imagination and railing to be told more fully.

Perhaps, someday, if I can tear myself away from reading and writing blogs long enough, I will see them realized.