I love telling. It’s easy. You should be an organic blogger. It’s not hard. Just do it. End post.
Showing is hard and there are several levels that I imagine exist. Showing is something I have struggled with on Epiblogger. Specifically, because I am essentially trying to sell the idea of organic blogging and I have no proof that it works—except my analogy between the success of organic farmers and the potential success of an organic blogger. But before I wrestle that issue, there are other, arguably more important, ways to show.
Showing is probably one of the most important things in writing. Likely, if you have ever taken a creative (or any) writing class they would have mentioned this. What I mean by showing is being concrete. Using real images to portray something. For instance, if I were to write (like I usually do 
): My day was a never-ending abyss of despair and hopelessness—you would think, I understand what he is saying but I don’t really know what an abyss is or what it looks like. But what if I said: My day was a pile of rotting bananas. Probably not my most brilliant example of poetics; however, it certainly gives you a sensual reaction and you connect with it much easier than an abyss. Being concrete or showing doesn’t need to be as melodramatic as me either. I read on a blog the other day, can’t remember which one, the blogger wrote “He is a small knot of a man”. What a simple and brilliant image that illuminates the person without taking a paragraph to tell us all about him. There is a story in that concrete image. Part of being organic is taking the time and putting in the effort to truly connect with your audience.
Do you remember in grade 1, when you brought the conch shell to class that your dad brought back from Hawaii for you and everyone thought it was so cool. And you blew the conch and it’s trumpet-sound echoed down the hallways. Then the smelly kid got up and talked about how he played with cows on the weekend and you almost fell asleep? Well, if you don’t remember it, I do, but I am not sure whatever happened to that conch. On the macro level of showing, you need to show and tell. For us organic bloggers, we are storytellers. In a nutshell, it is my personal belief that all we are is stories. And so the question is: are you a pre-packaged story or an organic one? Gather round, it’s story time: The Apple.
Story #1: The pre-packaged farmer, in his overalls and corn-cob pipe, spends his spring spraying his orchard with pesticides and fungicides. Days before the apples will naturally ripen, while they are tough like baseballs and don’t bruise easily, he loads the apples in bins by the thousands and ships them to the stores for mass consumption.
Story #2: The organic farmer, in his Birkenstocks and his Easy Rider hair, grows the counter-culture apple. His spring is spent with natural fertilizers and encouraging varieties of insects and birds to care for the orchard. The morning before he drives to the local Farmers market, he hand picks the ripest apples and puts them in re-usable bags.
Rhett, those stories were too cliche and entirely unfair. Could be, but they are my stories and I can tell them however I like. For the record, I know very little about farming, apples and the production process, but I do know that I like eating them. I think it is very easy to fall into the category of blogging in a way that works. Of course, pre-packaged posts work. That’s why they are pre-packaged (we all already know it will sell). But, organic blogging is about, again, connection, taking risks and trying to do something truly unique.
The last part, maybe the boring part, of showing is being accountable. How can I sell organic blogging if I don’t know it works. I can’t show you the data that proves this to be a successful model. But, I can show you, in every post so far, that I have tried to be a blogger who is organic and shows in every way possible. For now, I can tell you that this is an experiment in action and thus far the response has been great.
This was the second part of the series “Being Sold (Out)”. You can read part one here.
Photo by Alejandro Forero Cuervo
Subscribe via RSS
Subscribe via Email
2 Comments
Wow. Poignant. Speechless!
Your style (and organic blogging fullstop) connects with the reader on a far deeper level. You are truly giving a peice of yourself rather than just letting the cogs turn to rank up the amount of subscribers. I am aware there are Web sites out there which use tried and tested methods to link bait and offer a specific type of Blog reader “how to’s” on making cash, blah, blah, blah - but do you really want to snare those [what would you call them Rhett? > douches?] any way?
Thanks Kev. I was thinking today whether or not it was correct for me to play organic blogging as being counter-culture, but it seems to me it was correct. It is counter-culture to actively seek community without the direct desire to exploit it. Maybe that seems a bit harsh and each of us will have to decide our own limits, but it seems to me that there is a kernel of truth in there.