We blog to connect with others like ourselves; we blog to teach and mentor others; we also blog in order to teach ourselves. As other bloggers have observed, blogging provides “a place [for us to] think, plan and reflect” (Cann). It is also “a good means of getting down, or building up, all those thoughts that never quite get in to journal papers [or whatever other work you’re engaged in at the moment]" (Weller). However, such blogging is not really a new phenomenon. The practice of writing in order to learn is as old as the act of writing itself.
Consider, for a moment, the humble diary. Imagine what might be inside the locked "Dear Diary" of an adolescent girl. My own journals from that time reflect an endless fascination with boys, caustic commentary on friends and family members, and questions about my own future. Devoted to the quest of discovering who I was and whom I should become, I wrote daily, obsessively, and tediously. Those entries were bad writing for the most part, yet they helped me to decipher the mystery of I wanted, and needed, to live. Almost accidentally, the habit of writing daily taught me to how to live as a writer.
A diary or a journal may remain a simple record of daily life. or a carefully guarded cache of private musings. Journal entries might capture a moment or a feeling; record an interesting dream or nightmare; explore a memory; or preserve family history.
For more public writers, the journal may become a sort of writer's notebook, and act as the prelude to essays, poems, articles, or novels. A journal may be the dusty attic of a busy life, or a treasure trove for creative endeavor.
I love how William Zinsser describes the writing process: "Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know - and what we don't know - about whatever we're trying to learn. Putting an idea into written words is like defrosting the windshield: The idea, so vague out there in the murk, slowly begins to gather itself into a sensible shape" (Writing to Learn 16).
Whether I journal or blog, when I write, I learn.
Today's Links
Famous Historical Diaries
Dear Diary : Famous Journals and Diaries
Bibliography
Cann, Alan. "Why Blog?" MicrobiologyBytes. 24 Mar. 2010. Web. 4 Nov. 2010. <http://www.microbiologybytes.com/AJC/whyblog.html>.
Weller, Martin. "Some More Reasons to Blog." The EdTechie. 05 Sept. 2007. Web. 4 Nov. 2010. <http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2007/05/some_more_reaso.html>.
Zinsser, William. Writing to Learn: How to Write and Think Clearly about Any Subject at All. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Print.
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