About Me

Why I Blog…

                                                                          

“Why I blog” was a writing prompt suggested at a writing conference I attended in the summer of 2007 in Taos, NM.  The conference was the culmination of a long desire to study with writer and writing teacher Natalie Goldberg.   This particular conference was titled “Living Color” and dealt largely with the writing of memoir, the specific details of memory.  At the time I didn’t blog, had no real interest in blogging, didn’t read many blogs and didn’t really know anyone who was regularly blogging.   That has all changed in the time that has passed, and it occurs to me that blogging can be much like memoir…it is a record that we’re here, that we’re alive and observing our world.

 

Natalie often talks about being slow and dumb and when it came to making up my mind to actually start a blog, that certainly described me…slow and dumb.  So many decisions to make that served as convenient excuses not to begin in the first place:  what to call it, what to write about, where to host it. Things did eventually start coming together though.  My friend Pandora (pictured on the masthead and submitting the occasional guest post) offered to lend me her name for the blog.  I finally decided that it didn’t really matter what I wrote about as long as I wrote.  And the biggest geek-out of all is that I picked WordPress largely for the iPhone application so I can submit posts or just check-in any time. 

 

I have a two-fold motivation in starting Pandora’s Box.  One is that I now follow so many wonderful blogs and have friends writing such great blogs that I want to play too!  The other is the reality that I have found myself lacking motivation to attend to my writing practice.  There are so many distractions in this busy, busy technology laden world that it has become apparent that I need new motivation to sit down and write.  I believe the illusion of an audience will be a great motivator to keep me going, and I think I can count on at least two or three friends to keep me honest by actually reading what I write.  So after much planning and gentle prodding from many quarters, here I am.  After confiding in a friend that I was finally going to start a blog, she commented that she had always wondered why I didn’t have a blog already.  I can only hope this one meets her expectations and deeply appreciate her confidence! 

 

 

For more information on Natalie Goldberg and the workshops she teaches, check out: 

http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/

http://www.mabeldodgeluhan.com/index.html

 

One of Natalie’s assistants at the conference I attended has a great blog along with another writer called redRavine.  For a wonderful explanation of Natalie’s writing practice methods, check out:

http://redravine.wordpress.com/

 

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