Everyone’s a writer these days. Everyone’s got a blog, and day in, day out, millions of words are being published in the webosphere and the twittosphere, on tumblr and Facebook and everywhere else. It’s easy, right?
You only need to sign up for an account with Blogger or WordPress and ten minutes later, you’re away. Pouring out your soul or pimping your business ideas to the world. To whoever wants to listen.
But, really, I wish a few more bloggers would ask themselves this question first before they hit the keys: why should anyone read my blog?
Writing is an art. And though it’s easy now for everyone to be a writer, not everyone is an artist. If you’re not pursuing your art with passion and commitment, you’re not an artist. If you’re not constantly challenging yourself to grow, to develop, to be more than you are now, you’re not an artist. If you don’t feel the magic and adventure of the journey that you are on in your artistic life, you’re not an artist.
As an artist, you should know that you need to keep chipping away at your craft. It’s about pushing yourself to new limits. It’s about embracing dissatisfaction and disappointment with your work, then setting yourself new goals and getting back on it again. Because you are either in the pursuit of mastery right now or you’re settling for being an amateur. So what’s it going to be?
If you spend a lot of time reading what gets published in hundreds of blogs online everyday, you’ll soon realize that not everyone’s an artist. Being an artist means doing work that you put your heart and soul into. And in the race to become the experts, the leaders, the gurus and the linchpins of the web, too many bloggers are overlooking the basic requirements of this art. A tonne of bloggers are out there hitting ‘publish’ everyday and just clogging up the airwaves with dull and tedious tripe.
Hugh reminded me today that life is too short not to do something that matters. And with that, I’d add, life is too short not to do what you’re doing really damn well. Writing matters, and if you’re peddling your words on the internet then good writing really matters. Be passionate about your chosen subject, learn to develop your writer’s voice, and actively pursue mastery every day. Then, and only then, will you be able to say that you are an artist.
