Posts Tagged blogs

Another posting form my Smith-Corona Super-Speed.

(copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

_____

_____

Mt. Baldy (copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

Today is the second anniversary of MontanaWriter. That very first post from March 10th, 2010, contains a Yeats’ poem, “Cuchalain Comforted,” and a reference to the Book of Genesis. Little has changed it seems. Yeats and theology remain a significant part of  MontanaWriter after 24 months.

Surprisingly that first post did not have a purpose statement or mission statement of any kind. I say “surprisingly,” because in my memory I thought I had created one. I suppose “books, art, sports, and the big sky” functions that way.

In two years I have posted more than 340 times: poetry reviews, books reviews, music videos, my own poems, links to articles I have found interesting, and a few guest posts. I have posted about basketball and baseball, comic books and westerns, poems and poetic criticism.

There have been times when I have felt great energy and passion for blogging and posted often… and there have been times when I have felt like saying, “the hell with it,” and not posted anything at all. In that way blogging is a little bit like life. There are times when you feel great passion for the life you live… then there are times when you feel only its weight and gravity.

After two years of doing this, I have come gradually to think of blogging as a creative and spiritual”discipline” of sorts. But it is one that you do in a very public way.

One of the criticisms that St. Paul faced in his life was that “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Corinthians. 10:10). I have often thought those words describe a writer perfectly. In print we are often confident and self-assured, certain of what is truly important and what is merely dross. But in person… we more often than not come across as insecure wrecks. Two years of blogging have further convinced me of the truth of this.

I am excited about the new feature here at MontanaWriter I am calling ”Hugh’s Journals” and have a few more ideas in the works to beef up things up a bit. The number of unique visits and visitors continues to go up each month. I only wish that more would take the time to comment, good or bad, on what they find here. But I know that I seldom do so when I visit blogs, and so cannot really chide anyone.

Two years down the road a lot has changed here… and very little. In that way also, blogging is a little bit like life. People grow but they really do not change very much. Blogs grow readers and numbers of posts, but in the end they change very little. 

When I started MontanaWriter I had a vague notion that I wanted to write about poetry, and books, and sports, and Montana, and theology. Two years down the road, I have a vague notion that I want to continue to write about poetry, and books, and sports, and Montana, and theology… and so I guess I will.

____

(copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

The unseasonably warm winter continues here in the North Country. Each day the sun climbs just a bit higher and burns just a bit brighter and longer. The longer light lightens the load, quickens our step.

In Florida and Arizona spring training is beginning, another sign of spring. The local 9 coming off an historically bad year look pretty much the same. An addition here or there. It does not engender great confidence. But if Morneau’s issues are finally behind him and if Mauer… if Mauer could become another player than he is….

I wrote last spring here about the Twins 200-million-dollar man (Puckett vs. Mauer). After last year’s debacle, I feel even less confident of the Twins’ future. But since it is spring and the season of hope, I hope to be proved wrong.

Pre-season time is like springtime for a sports fan. So is having a team that is doing well. It puts a little extra bounce in your step, makes it much easier to enjoy the littlest things of life.

Non-sports fans seem always bewildered by this. Sometimes arrogantly so. I never leave a conversation though with someone who says they do not watch sports without shaking my head and thinking, “poor, dumb bastard.”

Life without sports and the arts is an empty thing. Life with just one or the other is a life just half lived.

MontanaWriter as a blog is, as emailers sometimes remind me, unfocused… one day a poetry review, the next a western, the next something about sports or theology. To grow a blog, they say, you need to have one central theme and post everyday. I know the latter is true and something I want to move toward. But the former….

Life is too full of too many fascinating things. There are too many books to be read. Too many poems to be read aloud. There are too many games to watch. And the sky is too big to settle on just one thing under it.

MontanaWriter reaches its two-year anniversary next month. It is still still evolving and settling in… just as its creator is still evolving and settling in.

Pitchers and catchers have reported. Spring is just around the corner. Hope in the air.

_____

Reading some of my new favorite blogs including, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, has reinforced for me something that I have been thinking about for a long time: there is really nothing new ultimately about blogs and epublishing. In a very real sense, exciting technology aside, we have simply come full-circle.

Just like in the golden days of pulp publishing, there are a lot of writers today writing a lot of stuff… some of it good, a little of it great, and much of it dreadful. Time and distance will ultimately separate the wheat from the chaff. In the meantime, we have to rely on our own critical eye and the advice of other literary sojourners.

Once you could go to a corner newsstand or store and buy whatever cheap and gaudy-colored pulp magazine caught your eye: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Western, Hard-Boiled, True Story, Spicy Romance, Porn,…. Now we just go to whatever gaudy-colored website or blog catches our eye: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Western, Hard-Boiled, True Story, Spicy Romance, Porn,…. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have been told by a number of regular readers of MontanaWriter that they like what they read here and think that there are others out there who would want to read it as well. “Link to things,” they say, “It will increase traffic.” “Go to other blogs and post there.”

Marketing myself has always been for me the hardest thing about being a freelance writer, about looking for work in general. It goes against the very deepest grain of my personality, against a lifetime habit of avoiding bragging or drawing attention to myself or “thinking too highly of yourself” or acting “too big for your britches.”

Reading about troubled pulp writer Robert E. Howard and his struggles to get stories not just written – but published and read – helps to put things into perspective. Read today in light of epublishing and blogging and trying to market your own stuff we see that indeed nothing has really changed: writing remains writing; publishing of any kind remains publishing; editors remain editors; readers remain readers; and finally, good writers are good writers.

The lesson here? There is hope for all of us writers if we just stick with it. And if every once in awhile we would just spice things up a bit… that would not hurt either

____