Why Write? 7 Bloggers Answer.
What is so exciting about writing? How do you keep going? 7 bloggers - ranging from a statistical modeling professor to a "beautyholic" blogger - share what writing means to them.
The things that motivate me mostly to write in my weekly blogs are mostly funny, different, or interesting things that I experience here on the campus of SUU or just here in Cedar City. Many times I have written about awkward or unusual situations that make me look rather silly or funny.
There are times I'll admit that I really have to search my brain about something that I can right about and I struggle coming up with something. In those moments some weird or not really very interesting will pop into my head and I'll just start writing. After that it just kind of flows.
I try to just show that I'm a regular student attending school here at Southern Utah University and that regular things happen to me.
- Jacob Askeroth
Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology
What excites me most about writing my blog is that I get to explore topics that I'm interested, and exercise the muscles of investigation, analysis and speculation, and I also feel like I get to educate people about important issues in technology.
What excites me about writing about technology is that right now, there are incredibly rapid changes occurring, not only in terms of the capacity of technology to accomplish more and more complex tasks, but the issues around intellectual property, openness of data, and the use of the web for social change. It's exciting to get to talk about these issues, and share them with the nonprofit community.
- Michelle Murrain
I guess the primary reason why I write is because I must. There are things that I feel must be said and if I don't say it I would explode! Writing for publication provides some outlet for these thoughts but there are only limited opportunities there. The blog lets me explore my ideas on my own time and schedule.
My blog is really the place where I think out loud, as it were. It is the place where I sort out the ideas buzzing in my head and try to make them coherent. Writing reveals to me more clearly my own ideas (with all their weaknesses) but also sometimes changes the way I think. The writer E. M. Forster once said "How can I know what I am thinking until I see what I say?" and I agree with that. Also, the more I write, the more ideas and connections it stimulates. So the biggest beneficiary of my blog is me.
In principle, this could be achieved by writing simply for myself but there is definitely a big benefit is writing a public blog that can be seen by anyone. I have a lot of respect for the readers of the blog, many of whom are really knowledgeable people. The fact that there are readers out there imposes a discipline and quality control on me that would be absent from writing in a purely private journal.
- Mano Singham
What excites me most about the writing is the response I get FROM writing. I used to tell myself, "I write for ME", but really, I've got to be honest; what is the point of writing (or blogging, for that matter), if no one ever reads it? Of course, I would draw the line at exposing really personal matters on the Internet, which involve my loved ones, but in order to make a point across to people who could benefit from your words, those words have to be able to reach them.
I enjoy the comments, and constructive (sometimes even the destructive) criticism from readers, because they show that my words actually meant something to them. It is even better when you hear that what you wrote has touched them and helped them in some way or another. And that is worth continuing writing for.
- Tine
What excites me most about writing is the opportunity to share something of myself with the world. Each time I put down my latest experience at SUU it is a new way of experiencing the moment, and teaches me something new that I did not realize when I was living in the given instance. The act of storytelling lends insight and fun, and writing is the sort of storytelling that is most likely to last past this particular phase in my life.
Of course, there is another feature to being a blogger than makes life interesting. Writing gives me a connection to the people around me. I've had people come up to me and begin discussing what's been going on in my life, and it is strange to realize that what is going on in my rather simple life can help some else with the issues in their own, even if it is only to the extent of knowing they are not alone. It is that exciting connection, that chance of understanding, that prompts me to sit down at my computer each week to spill the random moments of my life into my word processor and send it off to be placed on SUU Exposed.
- Kirstin Bone
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Writing is non-algorithmic: even from sentence to sentence, I have to rephrase ideas, turning them around and around until they fit together in a readable and coherent way. Beyond its obvious functions as a way for me to remember my thoughts and communicate them to others, writing does two things for me: first, it gets the thoughts out of my head, leaving room there for new ideas to develop; second, it crystallizes otherwise vague notions.
Talking does this too, but then I can't remember what I just said. When writing, sometimes it helps to talk things out first, sometimes it works better to keep silent and just put the ideas down on paper (or pixels).
- Andrew Gelman
I suppose I've always equated writing with thinking, words with thought: I can't really imagine the inside of my head without language (although the depressing, science-fictional implication is that language is a kind of virus that colonizes our brains with the convenient fiction of an "I"). Flights of theoretical fancy aside, I've always been a writer of one thing or another. As a kid, I wrote movies; as a teenager, plays; in my 20s, short stories; and now academic articles. (I'm also an on-again off-again keeper of journals.)
Writing is invaluable as a means of building theoretical arguments one stage at a time, roughing them in, filling them out, and polishing them until they're perfect (or until I get sick of them, whichever comes first). And then they're available for others to evaluate, incorporate, and refine. Writing, for me, is ultimately a kind of technologized communication practice, a discipline of inscription, the attentive practice of which leads to something larger, and greater, than any individual mind: a shared, democratic, and intensely participatory culture of ideas and experiences.
- Bob Rehak