Stream of Self-Consciousness

I never thought I was going to do this. Then yesterday I was talking to one of the Sarahs who is not my roommate, and who is a published author, unlike me, and she suggested I start a blog, so that all the publishers and agents whose interest I'm going to pique when I go to the writer's conference next summer, will have access to more of my writing. They'll see what I can write, she says. They'll see what sorts of things I'm thinking about, and how I think about them, and how I express that thinking. (Not very clearly, perhaps, as evidenced by that last sentence.)

But I'm worried, you know. I mean, I already keep a journal, and I don't really want to keep my journal on-line where anybody can read it. My journal is how I talk to God, and I know there's a place for, say, praying aloud and all that, but I guess I don't want the whole world hearing (as it were) every single conversation I have with Him. Especially when half the time I'm talking to Him about other people I know--does Gloria in Chicago need to know that Gloria in Worcester doesn't work at the law office where I used to work anymore? I don't think so. When the details get juicier, she might want to know, I suppose, but thus my hesitation.

Not, of course, that anyone will actually read this. Which is another thing I'm wondering about. I always thought that blogs were for people who were either famous or so convinced that they were going to be, that they feel compelled to broadcast as much of the content of their grey-matter as possible, just in case anyone cares. (With the exception--seriously--of my friend Mariam who writes a very good blog and isn't really the self-broadcasting type.) And probably, no matter how much anyone cares about me (and a lot of people do, I'm grateful to say, in spite of everything I do to deter them), no one really has time to read my ramblings. If I weren't me, I wouldn't.

I think getting a blog grates on me so much because I fear that it's a tacit confession that, whether any other blogger is or not, I am the self-broadcasting type. Now everyone will know it for sure, and so will I, and I will continue to prove it on a regular basis by writing self-conscious thoughts, proud of how I put them across, and terrified lest anyone plagiarise them.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll write something interesting in all of this, or something true. You never know. Stranger things have happened . . .