People and Blogs: Em

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I go by Em. My favorite hobbies are reading and writing. I think of myself as an ordinary person with an ordinary job. This covers the fundamentals but, if you’d like to know more about me, the “life” category on my blog is fairly revealing.

What's the story behind your blog?

Looking back on my early life on the web, I remember being an avid lurker of many blogs. I was also, for a time, an active participant of a now-defunct writing forum. I think I always liked the idea of having my own blog; eventually, on an unremarkable Saturday, I wrote and published my first post. I don’t know why exactly I started blogging though now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can come up with a few hypotheses. I think I appreciated the kind of impersonal intimacy that anonymous blogging can achieve; there’s nothing that an anonymous writer online needs to prove to an anonymous reader (assuming a small readership—I imagine that bloggers or, more broadly, “people online” with a larger readership feel all the pains and perils of celebrity). I was conscious of a kind of mysterious dual reality—that I didn’t know anything “real” about the bloggers I followed, but that I nonetheless was reading entries from their diaries that were illustrative of feelings that they hid in the context of their “real” lives. In reading these blogs, I probably felt a fantasy of kinship that endeared me forever to confessional writing. I was, after all, a teen prone to melodrama (and am now, for better or for worse, an adult prone to melodrama).

I will also freely admit that loved the sense of excavation intrinsic to blogging experiences; uncovering a new Blogspot was like plunging a shovel into the sand and finding a chest that could be unbolted to reveal a long confession printed on dusty, yellowed vellum. From what I’ve heard, the earlier 2000s and 90s yielded greater possibilities for discovery of personal hobbyist sites—but even in 2008, I felt like inventive, original writing was only a click away. I liked to think of my blog as one of many in this landscape—a tiny, cheap token that could be excavated from the sand and then flung back into the dunes.

My site has always been simple in design. Outside of the first few years (when I included a cartoony rendering to serve as an author’s photo and a banner featuring a large, pixelated eye), I have tended to avoid images and color in the design elements. I don’t have any particular aesthetic preference for minimalism—I just lack coding knowledge and have therefore always relied on customizable templates, usually one-column.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I write mostly for personal catharsis. For me, the desire to write is also related to the desire to imagine, to play, to create. These desires can serve as inspiration on their own, if followed with enough willingness.

External sources—books, film, music—are also fonts of inspiration for me. The best cure for writer’s block is to read a passage from a book you love—this instinct has never steered me wrong. I’m often inspired by words or by groupings of words that stick out to me. While I don’t have a specific process for writing, I do often start by writing out a list of words (my drafts are littered with such lists). As an example, here’s a list from a draft from this year:

cure, unreproachable, imposition, pulse, risk, band-aid

I typically write the bulk of a post in one or two goes and then spend a subsequent twenty drafts agonizing over a single word or a specific configuration of words. That said, I don’t ever attempt to achieve perfectly polished posts. I like writing that is weird, confessional, overwrought, overlabored, pained, and not couched in artifice.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I’ve always written on a computer. My first writing companion was a bulky desktop eMachine and, likely as a result of that initial experience, I have always preferred keyboards to pen and paper. It’s not particularly romantic, but it’s functional.

I don’t have too many requirements for the place where I write. Most of the time, I’m slouched over on the sofa, with an old, groaning netbook propped up on my knees. I am not proud of my terrible posture.

I do think the physical space around me can influence my creativity in the most direct sense. When I read back some of my writing, I can see the places where the world bled in. But at the same time, my favorite entries are ones that feel the most distant from the physical world, and that tapped into a “zone” outside it.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

I write using Wordpress. The Wordpress theme that I use (and would wholeheartedly recommend for its simplicity and user-friendliness) is called "Marianne".

I’ve tried all manner of blogging platforms, so I’m not particularly wedded to any one site. I’m not “techie” in any sense but, with all the platforms available today, I don’t think that should stop any sufficiently motivated would-be blogger. That said, I do think the world of blogging today (if it can be called a “world”—perhaps “island” is more apt) can be intimidating for non-“techie” people, and the result is that most people do not consider owning their own domain to be a viable approach and instead prefer to share their writing in the walled gardens of social media. I do understand that preference—it’s much easier to find community that way. Still, I cling to my blog in all its strange outdatedness, if only because I think it’s the main reason that I have been able to maintain a consistent writing habit over the past fifteen years of my life.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I would likely opt for a different name. “Conscience Round” is the name I chose as a macabre adolescent, and I think that shows. A “conscience round,” purportedly, is a blank round of ammunition provided, in secret, to a random member of a firing squad, so that all members may preserve the fiction that they did not fire the killing shot. I don’t precisely remember why I chose this name, but I think it may have had something to do with the fact that it recalls the first sentence of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (the novel that was my first love).

I very much enjoy perusing the handcrafted sites of the “small” web and, though I don’t have a coding background, I have often thought about creating a more personalized layout for my site. I’ve had the minimal look of my site engraved in my mind for so long that it feels difficult to change but, if I started today, I think I would put more effort into the aesthetics of the site, because I do think aesthetics can tell a story. As is stands, the look of “Conscience Round” suggests that the blogger cares purely and exclusively about the text which is part of my story, but perhaps not the whole of it.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

The cost of the blog has varied over time. I currently spend about 30 USD per year on the domain name and on the hosting.

I have never tried to monetize the blog, though I have toyed with the idea of e-publishing a low-cost collection of short stories so that readers could support me if they so choose. I certainly don’t think there would be enough interest in this to make it a moneymaking endeavor, but it could be fun to try—and isn’t this the purest reason of all, just to give something a try for the possible joy of it? Possibly the entirety of my blogging “life” can be summarized in this way.

I think it’s lovely thing if a creative person can supplement their income or make a living from their work. I wish more artists could dedicate the fullness of their time to their art. I can also respect the view that monetization introduces the incentive to create and to edit to suit an audience. It can also tie the act of writing to the expectation of external validation. I don’t regard these outcomes as universally positive, healthy ones for a writer. I personally prefer to let my own interests guide me, rather than the assumed preferences of an audience (though if these ultimately coincide, then so much the better). I try to resist the urge to write with a vision of a reader on the other side.

Over the years, I think I’ve struck a good balance in that I endeavor to write habitually, always for myself, but with true appreciation for those who wish to read. If I didn’t want to be read in some capacity, I wouldn’t publish online—but I don’t expect to be read, and indeed I don’t write to be read.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I want to recommend FigCat and the creator behind it, Wargaluk. While FigCat is not a “traditional” blog, I think the entries are sufficiently blog-like to merit a mention here. Wargaluk curates lists –“Dreams, visions, allegories, and otherworlds before 1600” was the first of these I encountered—that are developed and organized with such diligence and care. I know a labor of love when I see one. I hope seeing his name here might encourage him to set up a blog in earnest.

It makes me sad to realize this, but I no longer read very many blogs. As I wrote in an earlier answer, it used to feel easy to find other writers online just by clicking around. I took this for granted. Now, when I look up the blogs I use to follow, the links are all dead. Every so often I look up a broken link on the WayBack Machine to peruse a familiar land (one of my old favorites is technicolor.org).

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Some of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had on the web have involved strangers reaching out to me to collaborate on small passion projects (a story, a tiny game, a penpaling exercise, etc.). Most of these projects eventually fizzle out but it’s never about the finish line for me. So, if you have a project in need of a writer like me, I’m always interested and available.

As a final note, if you could permit me the indulgence of trying to offer advice, I also want to say that, if you are a person who loves to write, or loved to write, or wrote as a child but gave it up as an adult, or has never written and wants to start, or to restart, then do yourself a kindness both small and huge and start today.