Let me just say this before I get too far into my thoughts here:

1. I know Canada is small, with about 10% of the US population.
2. I doubt many people vote in the Canadian Blog Awards.
3. I’ve checked my in-box, and I’ve still not heard from the Pulitzer Committee.

And yet I’ll write this.

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The Canadian Blog Awards nomination for Best Personal Blog in Canada, let alone making it to round 2, has taken me a little by surprise. [Since I didn't nominate myself and found out about it via someone else quite after-the-fact.]

It’s not taking me by surprise because I don’t believe in my writing talent, though.

Why, then? Because I’m kind of apathetic about being read. NO, NO, COME BACK. I don’t mean by YOU.

I love to BE read. I love to know I’ve affected anyone. I like the kinda smirks the boys have when they say they’ve been exploring my archives. I’m proud of the work I do. I don’t phone it in. I worry about my quality. And I don’t for a moment take your interest for granted.

However.

I never, ever market this blog, not beyond the “hey, I have a new post” announcements on Twitter. I don’t read other peoples’ blogs, I don’t comment on theirs’ to drive traffic to mine. I don’t care about getting advertisers or scoring free loot to review. I don’t join blogging communities to get readership support of other writers. I don’t even have fucking “share” widgets on my posts (even though I plan to get drunk and play with those things over the holidays — might as well look the part of a finalist for Best Personal Blog in Canada, eh?).

I just don’t care about that part of it. I want you to find me, read me, and enjoy me, but I don’t want to whore myself to make that happen.

Because then it becomes about the whoring — the contacts, the business, the results, the site traffic — and not the writing.¹

I have the luxury of believing in my writing. I have the gift of having it be important to who I am. Finding your style, that’s… some writers search a lifetime for that. Most just mimic it; you know — find a style you love and run with it. To find your voice and hone it, it’s a writer’s dream. In small, real ways, I live that dream. That’s a great gift for someone as young as I am.

But I’m also old enough to know that we never stay where we are. Like the earth spins on its axis, like the wind never rests, so too is it with our selves and our lives. My writing style, I’ve found it. But delve into the 3,500 postings I’ve written over the last five years, and that style? It’s not just one thing. I’ve dabbled. I wear them all with ease now.

Like a painter has periods over his life — Picasso’s infamous “Blue” period as just one example — so too do writers. We never have to marry to a style or movement; growth is endemic to who we are as craftspeople — ever searching for truth, always looking for patterns.

I have some friends who, through their faith in me and my abilities, push me to chase the golden apple of writing. It makes me smile and I don’t sweat it. I know they think I’m stagnating or not chasing my dreams, but they don’t understand that in some ways I just live it. In others, though… writers age well, like wine and cheeses.

Know what the average age of the first-time novelist is? 34.

Know what any good writing teacher will tell you? “Write a book. Then throw it away. Then write another book. Sell that one.”

Why? Because we’re full of shit until 35. Self-involved, melodramatic. You don’t read writers who don’t understand the world and what makes us move through it. Most of us youthful types, we think we know so much about life.

Me, having been through one fuck of a ride from 25 to 35, I just laugh at the notion that I understood life at all before I hit 34. I really do. I tried, I thought I did, but as it turns out? I didn’t. I do now.

I’ve spent over 3,500 postings, probably a half-million words or more, and thousands of hours, figuring out who I am as a writer. It’s been the journey of a lifetime. Literally.

I understand life now, I don’t ask why I’m here. I just know. I’m here because I am. I live because I can. I do because I must. That’s life. Simple. The whys, the wherefores, they’re only what you make them. Life is truly open for interpretation, and your interpretation will be your epitaph. Make of it what you will.

The older we get, the more we realize how navigable adversity really is. The things that left us shattered at 18 require a few stiff drinks and an all-night chat at 35, followed by a greasy breakfast. That casual comfort with the calamitous happenings of a grown-up life, it tempers one’s urgency in writing too.

When those friends pressure me ever-so-lovingly about writing more or for a vaster audience, I smile inside a little now. This is a recent development.

In a way, I know what my style and my voice are. In that way, I’m ready for Le Big Audience. In another, though… I’m like an amnesiac rediscovering a life I walked away from years ago. Somewhere around age 20, I became a different version of me. This getting-thinner-gradually-over-two-years thing has peeled away as much dense padding from around my heart and soul as it has around my waistline. I know things about myself and my life and my dreams I’d thought were only some hazy vague memory from so long ago. But there’s also new things I’m learning, things about my strength, acceptance, and resilience I never tested before.

Has that changed my writing? I don’t know. I haven’t gone back far enough to study and compare my styles of then versus those of now.

It doesn’t matter to me that much, though. This moment, this is what matters. Where am I at, writing-wise? Where I want to be? Not really. I’m a fan of my work, but I know where I want it to be and this ain’t it. I don’t speak geographically, either.

I think about it sometimes — painter’s style periods — and I wonder what this period of my life will be. Is this when I truly defined the woman I was to become? Is this when I realized that I can believe the hype and take people at their word for how they feel about what I do? Is this when I really came to own the strong woman I knew lived inside, who’d take charge for the next four or so decades?

Boy, would I like to think so.

And that’s why, for me, it’s not about a writing audience today. It’s about the journey.

10 years and 6 months ago, I sat alone on a beach, on a rock, at Cape Foulweather in Oregon, staring at the churning waves crashing nearby, and I made a silent wish. I wished I could write again, I wished I could write something with any significance at all. I was trapped in this bland period where all writing skill escaped me, and unknown to me then, it would persist for another five years.

But I begged the waves to let me be a writer. I remember looking down at the sand between my feet and accepting that, for me, I’d be happy to just write for the rest of my life; that I’d be happy without the financial reward; for me then, writing was the most important thing in my life, something which escaped me.

For me now, writing is the most important thing in my life, something ever-present, that shapes me weekly.

Too bad I have so little time for it these days. Still, it’s there like an old friend — ready when I can cobble a few spare moments together, as comfortable today as it’s ever been — but it’s not my driving force.

I have more that is important to me now than I’ve ever had before — a fuller life, more to draw upon, and more to cherish.

Still, I must write.

With love, skill, and diligence, I believe the money coming is inevitable for anyone who does that which is true to who they are. The commercial success is not yet my concern, a “paid” writing life was never important. It would be nice, but it’s not important.

It’s like Richard Ford, the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist once wrote: “Writing for a living is a privilege, not a God-given right, as the opportunities are few though sought-after by many. There are years of rejection which serve as a crude winnowing process, after which those left standing are those who simply must write.”

After all these years, after all that grief, I still simply must write.

So it’s with great gratitude, then, that I should be nominated for Best Personal Blog, because I write this blog coming from a place of truth for no other reason than to write.

Personal? You bet it is.

Thank you.

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¹ Not that I judge anyone for monetizing their blogs! Go for it! But, me, I’m just living the writer’s life and trying to learn my craft. My world’s too demanding, I have a full-time job that pays my way in life, so throwing myself into marketing when I could be writing? Just priorities, man. But, heck, if you want to advertise here or send me gifts or donate, it’s all right there in the sidebar and on the About Me page. :)