"Is blogging an art?" was the question this reviewer was asked as he picked up his ticket for what turned out to be one of the most interesting and lively events of the Edinburgh International Book Festival thus far. The answer is that, yes Claudia, it probably is.
"Can Any Mother Help Me?" is the title of a recently published collection of letters culled from the archives of the Cooperative Corresponding Club, formed so that isolated women could share experiences of child-rearing and domestic problems - the world changes and does not. The contemporary solution to the same issues are now provided by a number of blogs.
Helen Fowler and Caroline Dunford are two exponents, both ‘mummy bloggers', ('mommy bloggers' in the U.S., of course), a phenomenon of considerable proportion, as isolated mothers share problems, solutions and the challenges of being cooped up with a small person of incredibly large ego.
Helen Fowler, (Mother At Large) won a book contract through her blogging, while Caroline Dunford's How to Survive the Terrible Twos; Diary of a Mother under Siege was based on her own livejournal accounts of life with two infants. Dunford's notes on blogging offer sound advice to anyone thinking of starting a blog.
Both paid tribute to another excellent "mummyblogger" Wife in the North.
Both Fowler and Dunford stressed the need for focus and purpose in creating and maintaining a blog, and agreed theirs had both been to offer "self help with laughs".
Many blogs are attempts at profile-raising and, of course, the focus of blogs can be as diverse as the human beings that compose them. From the notorious and dubious (in all senses) Belle de Jour to the bluntly honest (and now sadly defunct) Grumpy Old Bookman, bloggers reveal humanity in its grandeur and its trivial self-obsession in equal measure.
The visual focus of the web can favour shiny, pretty things and the geekiness of the male means motorbikes, toy trains and soldiers are in there with the baby oil and infant diets - Mrfarrow2udba offers a family-friendly peek at the world of the obsessive.
Fowler and Dunford offered sage advice on the technical aspects of blogging, recommending Google Blogspot, Wordpress and Dreamweaver as starting points for the tyro blogger. They urged "staying on the corner" as most blogs take time to pick up a following, and to remember that the world of the blog has no private space.
A number of bloggers, notably "Nightjack" and "Blood, Sweat & Tea", reflect and report from the frontline of public services such as police and medical services, exposing their creators to potential exposure and discipline.
In revealing the identity of police blogger Nightjack as Lancashire Detective Constable Richard Horton, The Times newspaper may have been within its legal rights, but few will have applauded its action. Many such bloggers are idealists or use their blogs to develop ideas, but both Dunford and Fowler urged monetising the asset created through the blog. In the words of Mae West, "keep a diary and it will keep you".
It's certainly possible to measure the success of a blog by use of a Google Analytics tool to measure the number of hits and viewers, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to facilitate migration to other blogs and sites (for example, users and webmasters get automatic updates of EdinburghGuide.com's latest content via our rss feed).
A blog isn't just for Christmas - it needs continual updating to maintain interest and traffic, and it's here that many blogs eventually die. Which takes us back to why people establish a blog in the first place. Time-limiting the blog by focusing on a project or other objective to be achieved gives the blog a point at which it can be ended gracefully. But of course, there are perennial issues and questions, though there may come a time when the blogger echoes the last words of the late Constance Spry "someone else can arrange these".
Copyright Bill Dunlop 2009
First published on EdinburghGuide.com 2009