More Blogging Thoughts

I’m trying to put my finger on why I am so wrapped up in blogging, both working on kloeamongtheturks and reading other blogs, which I do several hours each night. (I haven’t linked to most of these blogs cause they don’t relate to this one and, let’s be honest, some are not G-rated…)
Creating a blog can be a very light activity, but long-term blogging is a tremendous project, requiring countless hours of writing, researching, designing, making visuals, interacting with the blogging community, and promoting your blog (which I haven’t done, yet). Creating a blog is like writing a novel, with intricate characters, settings, plots and subplots. Blogs, like postmodern novels, contain multiple layers as comments enrich the narrative.
But there are differences. The blogger is publishing the blog-novel in process, rather than completely finishing a tomb and then sending it off to be critiqued/rejected/published. The blog-novelist is self-publishing, which is a very powerful idea and not as ego-massaging as in the past (think of the self-produced pop music and movies that have achieved success). When you self-publish you can DO ANYTHING, or anyway, it feels that way: write a novel, make a movie, bring down a congressperson, run for president. Your work is not under your bed, waiting to be discovered after you’ve died—it’s out there somewhere in the blogosphere. Even if no one reads it, the possibility exists that someone will and someone is.
After publishing every post I click on “view blog,” although I know exactly how it will look. Even after 190 posts, I still get a kick out of seeing my shiny new entry up on the web.
PS Don’t you just love this dress? It’s what a Turkish bride might wear at her engagement party…
PPS A few weeks ago Blogger popped up here completely in Turkish, so now all my interface is done in Turkish. Cok iyi, Kloe!