On not having a niche

...or, on being a jack of all writing topics, and a master of none.

I read this the other day, and it prompted a bit of a Think. (I can highly recommend that blog, but if you find you love it too and start reading it regularly and eventually discover you prefer it to mine, for the love of God, don't tell me.)  Anyway, it was a Think about what it is I write about, what I want to write about, and the point of having a blog at all, really.

Cards on the table, heart-on-my-sleeve moment ahead (what was that about good writers avoiding cliches?) - writing gives me a thrill like nothing else. Having an "I'll write about this!" moment, feeling ideas for a post gradually bubble and come to the boil, attempting to come up with witty asides, writing a resounding last line - I love the whole process. I need to do it; I swear it's good for my brain. For eight hours a day during the week, I'm ticking off small tasks, dealing with the urgent and the immediate - writing is a mental stretch of the legs, like giving a restless pony a mad gallop around a field, just for the fun of it.

I couldn't market this blog. The only category it would fit in would be "the haphazard ramblings of an average, middle-class, female twenty-something". I don't feel a need to try and "sell" it, mind, but after three years, I still struggle to answer the question "what do you blog about?" And not just because, like "party", "blog" should never be used as a verb.

What do I blog (eurgh) about?

 

Just... stuff. Bit of this, bit of that. Things I've done, places I've been, some vaguely feminist things, some faintly political things, some silly, joyful things. Issues I've thought about for long enough to be able to scramble together 800-or-so words.

During a recent "so you want to be a writer? What do you write about?" conversation, someone said to me, "you need a theme... like sex and baking!" Which is a passable suggestion, sure, but a) 40 trahillion filth-and-filo blogs probably already exist, b) I'm not much of a baker, and c) much as I'd love to be able to write about my sex life, I'm not anonymous, so I can't.

I can't call myself a feminist blogger, because I don't write solely about feminism. I try and stay away from politics for the most part, because it's not something I feel I know enough about, and if you're writing things on the internet, then by God, you need to know your stuff. And this is never more true than if you're a woman, writing about politics.

I like reviewing things - music, books, films, TV - but not all the time. I get more of a kick out of writing-as-a-mental-leg-stretch. I thrive on the challenge element - can I spin a few hundred words out of this? Can I throw in some half-funny lines about that? Can I mould this topic into the shape of a blog post?

I'm a make-up and beauty freak, and a frightening proportion of my income goes directly to Boots,but beauty blogging is an overcrowded stage. and as I keep saying, I like writing about different things.

So I don't quite know why I'm worried about not having a niche; I suspect deep down it's because I know that themed blogs are simply easier to find, and their audiences grow at a faster rate. More people are interested in food/make-up/vintage fashion than in "good writing". Not that I'm saying my writing is necessarily good; I just can't not do it. It's getting to the point where at least 60% of the things that happen in my life prompt me to think "could I write about this?" - if only in passing. I started this blog purely for myself, but writers are basically passive-aggressive attention seekers - the whole point of putting your thoughts on paper, or on screen, is to get someone's attention. Whether it's an audience of tens or of thousands, writers spin words to forge connections.

And those connections are tiny threads of gold, spider-web-thin, across time and space.

 

On the Bambi bookshelf

Yup, sticking with that subheading for now. Sorry.

This week, I'm storming through Viv Albertine's Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys. Albertine was the guitarist in the all-female punk band The Slits, and her memoir is, in short, a bloody good read. She was mates with Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten and Vivienne Westwood, and dated Mick Jones of The Clash on and off for ages (and I've just found out that he wrote my favourite Clash song, Train in Vain, about her). The writing is sparse and at times, gaspingly honest, but by God, we need more women like Viv. What a life she has led.

This interview with her is a good'un.


Currently listening to... The Tron Legacy soundtrack (it's an hour and a half long; I wouldn't click if I were you).

Online comments - who are they good for?

On Sunday, I went to a Guardian Masterclass* for aspiring freelance journalists. It was a fantastic day run by industry professionals who were unbelievably positive and keen to share their knowledge. There was none of that "well, print journalism's a sick, dying horse these days, so if I were you lot, I'd stick to basket-weaving or whatever it is mere peasants do to make a living". I can’t fault the event at all, but there was one little thing that bugged me: a Q & A session with Guardian journalist Marina Hyde was derailed by at least four questions on the issue of online comments, and how writers deal with them. One question on it would have been fine, but four? I just don’t think they’re important enough to warrant half an hour of discussion. (A whole blog post's worth of discussion, yes, but no-one's paying for this. Yet.)

  *well, I say that. In order to be in London for 9.30am, I got to the station at half-7. Whereupon I was told "there's a broken-down train at Gatwick, so nothing's going further than there". Four hours, four trains, a brief car journey and seemingly all the stations in Sussex later, I got to Victoria. By some brilliant stroke of luck, I made it to the Royal College of Medicine - where the event was being held - at the first coffee break, so I didn't have to sneak into an auditorium and make a spectacle of myself.

Anyway, Marina Hyde’s perspective on below-the-line comments was fairly straightforward, and ran something along the lines of: “I don’t care, and I don’t have time to read them anyway… I think they should be there, because if I’m pissing on people’s opinions above the line, then they should be able to piss on mine in the comments” (I’m paraphrasing, but she definitely said “pissing”. You can ask her). She mentioned that some columnists don’t think readers should be able to comment at all, and as an aspiring writer, I can absolutely see why.

In theory, the comments section is a safe space for debating the issue being written about above the line, which is well and good and dandy. In practice, however, it seems to be flypaper for headcases. And I don’t mean the genuinely mentally ill, I mean the people whose opinions are a bit… Daily Mail on steroids. “This country’s gone to the dogs” and “back in my day” and the like. People write because they want to connect with readers, plant ideas, raise a smile, provoke discussion, and so to be a writer who is against online comments can be a bit of a contradiction. The trouble is, in the Venn diagram of “people who have the time and inclination to write comments on newspaper articles” and “people whose opinions are well-informed and logically sound”, there isn’t an awful lot of overlap.

There is a tiny voice in my head – and it’s one I’m working on drowning out – that keeps saying, “Is it absolutely necessary that we can publish our every opinion for all to see?” Yes, I’m aware of how that sounds – it’s a bit anti-free speechy, and a bit rich coming from a blogger. But if you look at Twitter, and the amount of abuse aimed at high-profile writers, then you might see what I’m getting at. It’s a related issue – from the safety of a keyboard, people feel they can say anything, and the notion of having to answer for your actions is forgotten. How else do you explain the bomb threats, rape threats and disgusting language directed at Grace Dent, Hadley Freeman, Mary Beard, India Knight, to name just a few? From a distance, it’s easy to say, “well, the people saying this stuff are clearly arseholes, and too childish to bother getting stressed about”, but if you’re facing it day in, day out, while simply trying to do your job, I should imagine it gets pretty fucking old.

I suppose there are measures in place – comments are moderated, offensive language doesn’t usually get through. But that’s only a small part of the problem; it would be lovely if before you could publish a comment on an online article, you had to answer the question: “will your comment improve anything for anyone today?" 

Unfortunately, there will always be ill-informed idiots, and the internet's just another platform for them. I'm still not sure online comments are a complete necessity, but maybe I'm missing something. I'd say I just won't read them, but everyone likes to feel morally superior once in a while, so I doubt I'll be giving up my Mail Online habit any time soon. Which is sad, really.