Dear Fellow Self-Important Narcissists

Recently I was telling a few friends and fellow scribblers about this here blog of mine, partly because I thought they might be interested in what I have to say (well, you never know) and partly - I'll be honest - because I hoped some of them might click on that lovely little Follow button and/or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The reaction of one of them was striking. Let's call her Sue. Because, actually, that's her name. But it's OK, I can be pretty sure she won't read what I write here, as her immediate and forceful reaction was along the lines of, Bloggers! Bloody self-important narcissists! Why should the world be interested in reading what they ate for breakfast? It's this celebrity culture of ours gone mad. Mad!


I may have exaggerated slightly for comic effect there. But this is a reaction I've experienced quite a few times. Perhaps you have too? And, yes, the people voicing these objections do always seem to think we blog about what we ate for breakfast. For the record, today I had toast spread with some rather nice home-made plum jam and a cup of strong black coffee. It was tasty.

But do people who object like this have a point? Are we just self-aggrandizing narcissists?

Sue, I should make clear, is no technophobe. She's an active participant in several internet-based writing groups and forums. From these she derives vital feedback, writing advice, and, I'm sure, a sense of community. But I think that's exactly what blogs can do too. Only better. The "what you had for breakfast" objectors have just failed to understand what blogging is. Blogs are a sort of dynamic, informal, infinitely-extensible, ad hoc community. Or at least they can be. Because here's the fantastic thing. People don't use these communication technologies in the way they're "supposed" to.

A blog was originally a "web log", intended as something like an online log or diary. The sort of place you might, indeed, detail what you had for breakfast. And I know lots of people use them in precisely that way. But most, it seems to me, do not. They invent no end of new uses for the technology put at their fingertips. They use blogs to broadcast writing advice, or to publish a magazine, or to share experiences of agents and publishers, or to build a writing "platform", or to just swap tales of the trials and tribulations of writing. The permutations are endless. From the writing blogs I follow - and the fine folks who follow me in return - I derive endless useful information, support and entertainment. And breakfasts are rarely mentioned.

Twitter is the same. If you go to the Twitter web site (did I mention I'm @SimonKewin by the way?), the tweet prompt says "What's happening?" - as with blogs, the intended use is for people to detail where they are, what they are doing etc. But in my experience the vast majority of tweets aren't like this at all. They're conversations. They're bookmarks of useful or interesting web pages. They're announcements or jokes. They're the rallying cries of campaigns. Once again, people have taken the technology and bent it to their own will.

I was, I'll admit, slightly sceptical when I started this blog. It did seem a little self-indulgent. Now I see it as a fundamental part of my identity as a writer. It's as simple as that. I wouldn't be without it. I don't think it's any more narcissistic than, say, writing a novel that you hope other people will want to buy and read.

And Sue, if you do read this, I'm sure you'll appreciate the irony of me using your comments as the material for a blog post. Bloody bloggers!