Following a deep, long chat with a budding writer/friend of mine, I was thrown into a whole debate around the worthiness of blogging. She dismissed blogs as simply being light, superficial chat, unworthy of any critical acclaim.
For me however, they open up the world of writing to so many people that they deserve some kind of recognition.
I see blogs as being a simple, honest, unpretentious ways of keeping notes of events, happenings, random views, rants, debates, ideas - basically a virtual diary. Blogging doesn't have the pretense of many full-blown articles: they aren't really meant to be pompous, in-depth features with facts and figures or deep philosophical meaning, but are rather informative, personal views and accounts. My friend seemed outraged by the fact a book had been published out of a collection of blog posts. Indeed it doesn't claim to be high literature - or anything with some kind of depth- but I still believe blogging is a style in itself - a 'lite' version of writing perhaps. As a matter of fact, I really don't see anything wrong with it. Many authors have in the past published critically acclaimed diaries or short stories, and this is very similar - it just touches the realm of the virtual. I don't see how a notebook or a word document is superior to a virtual, online account of one's life experiences. Blogging is writing after all. It is open to anyone, it's free and has no class or intellectual barrier. There lies its appeal and worth.
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