New blog

You may notice I have a new link called "Playing with words". The other day I was browsing the "Green Guide", part of the Age newspaper, and they had an article about miniblogs, some of which only allowed you so many characters (as in letters, not people who inhabit novels and writer's imaginations!) per day. I thought the idea of this was intriguing, and feeling inspired by what one of my writer friends is doing (see link to "Ordinary Magic") thought I'd like to have a go at one of these.

As a writer, there's always the question of putting things up on the internet versus trying to get them published by a magazine or book publisher and maybe get paid for my efforts. Money is not why I write, though I'm always happy when a cheque comes in. And it is validation -- someone not only liked this but liked it enough to publish it. The other side, especially with poetry, is getting stuff out there to an audience and read. There are so many blogs around these days that I wonder just how many people do like them. On the other hand, I'm quite partial to a big of blog surfing (oh, I do love Blogger's "next blog" feature) if I have some spare time. I have to be careful though not to use it as a procrastination tool. Writing has to come first. Always.

Anyway, I got it in my head that I'd like to try a miniblog, and use it as a creative outlet. What I'm writing are not poems, but poetical ideas. I haven't put the thought into structuring them as poems, into linking ideas and building a poem, or on keeping to one metaphor. These are just random thoughts, captured as a way of feeding my writing.

I do think creativity feeds itself: the more you do creatively, the more creativity wells up within you. Some people fear using it up, exhausting it, but it's the opposite. It becomes exhausted if you don't use it, just like a limb you're not using, and if you're not careful it can wither and die. Creativity is another way of looking at the world, an eye for difference and the ability to capture and express it. So, with all this in mind, I set about starting a miniblog, hence the existence of "Playing with words".