Toddled Dredge

Chilihead is hosting a carnival of blogging stories. She has a list of questions for people to answer about how they started blogging. If you want to try this too, her questions are here.

How did you start blogging?

I was sitting home alone one night while my daughters were sleeping. My husband worked nights at the time, so I was home alone at night a lot. I had heard my pastor mention that he had a blog, so I thought I’d look for it. After seeing his, I thought, “Hmm. Maybe I could do one of those.”

I mentioned it to my husband, and he suggested naming the blog “Toddled Dredge,” a phrase we had been mentally saving since we first saw it as the mangled closed-caption spelling of the Olympic skater Todd Eldridge. At the time I had no idea how much I would write about my toddlers or how often I would have to dredge something up from my brain when I was too tired to feel creative. It was just kismet, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Did you intend to be a blog w/a following? If so, how did you go about it?

No. I might feel a little wistful for a big readership, but I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I think I would vacillate between anxiety over the pressure to post, exultation at the number of comments, and paralyzing stage fright.

I have been pleasantly surprised at how many people choose to stop for a few minutes and read my words, or even direct people here. One of the best gifts of the blogging coimmunity has been the way they make me feel respected just for stringing words together well. Respect was something I desperately needed when I began as an isolated SAHM, and I am still very grateful for it.

What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

When I first started, I was brain-starved from staying home with two small children. I had very few opportunities for adult conversation, and hoped that blogging would be a place for intellectual challenges and stimulating debate.

That has happened, but not in the way I expected. Instead of immersing myself in a world of intellectual bloggers, I have found my home among the mommybloggers. This has happened for one very important reason: mommybloggers write better than the intellectuals do. I’m not kidding. Look around. The bloggers who want to be culture critics or demagogues or political pundits are, for the most part, boring. They have not mastered the brevity of the medium. They seem to consider all of their words too important to be left out, so they ramble on for whole unecessary paragraphs. They make my eyes hurt.

I find more mommybloggers (I apologize if you are offended at the term, but I am one too) producing carefully crafted posts, weighing each word. It has challenged me in my own writing, teaching me a healthy brutality in editing my own stuff. I am a better writer now for reading momblogs.

I still don’t find the blogworld a very good place for debate. The internet encourages too much frantic emotion. Some bloggers are skilled at encouraging measured, thoughtful responses among their commenters and some manage the occasional circus with dignity, but it is rare that I find someone actually having polite disagreement. The more common etiquette seems to be to say nothing if you disagree. (If you want to read a fairly technical but polite blog disagreement, check out the comments in my real-life friend Angie’s post on the nature of God).

Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

I expected to write about books a lot more than I now do. The community built around books is much smaller than the one around parenting, and within the community of booklovers there are only so many who love the same sorts of books I do (or hate the same sorts of books I do, which is equally important).

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

I wish I had known more about the mechanics of blogging. I’m still pretty clueless about most technical aspects.

Do you make money with your blog?

No.

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

My sister and her husband read regularly, as do a few real life friends. My husband reads every post and every comment. He loves to see that people read me and respond, even if it’s only with a “Hey! Nice post!” My parents know, but are too easily confused by the internet to find my site reliably. They only read when I specially point something out to them.

My in-laws do not know about it, I think, though I was nervous for a while when I gained a reader in their city. I would not want them to know because they are very polite people who only say nice things about my children. Even statements from me like “I’m tired because the baby kept me up” or “The children don’t eat enough” are met with eyes askance and disapproving silence. They would not approve of me describing the really hard days of motherhood, or being honest with strangers about family conflict.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?

Be fair to people. Remember that commenters frequently take whatever emotion you are expressing and intensify it, so think before you hit the publish button. A few months ago I read a post where a mom playfully complained about the little girls who kept calling her son. The commenters went on to “humorously” call this elementary schoolgirl things like “slut.” It was really disturbing. If the mother of that little girl ever found the site - or the girl herself - I think she would be very hurt.

Don’t “should” on yourself. Blogging is supposed to be fun, not an obligation. Don’t beat yourself up for not posting or not meeting some other goal you had. You will never write at all if you do it out of guilt. Relax and let it be fun.