The Bell Jar

There is a long-standing tradition (in fact it should be a fallacy really with its own name and chapters in books on literary criticism as it is so popular) that all art is autobiographical. In the most part, novels are rarely overtly autobiographical (except for the debut novel which is usually a painfully earnest tale about someone becoming a writer) although of course there are often autobiographical elements in there. But the narrator and author are two different people with possibly contradictory opinions on things.

Which reminds me of blogging somewhat. We have an author (the me that exists in the “real” world) and the narrator of this blog “Billy”. Billy looks like me and occupies the same body, but is often different.

I am restricted though, by my editorial policy which states that I’m not allowed to make things up on this blog. I can take things to absurdity, conflate situations, muse inwardly but I can’t make something up out of nothing. But if I didn’t have such a policy… why, I could do anything!

Well not quite, because I’m always going to have some kind of restriction, even if it is a rather outwardly pointless ouilipo type manoeuvre. Trying a new approach was part of the reason for my alternative blog, which has a different, but secret (for now) editorial policy. (Also the individual authors of that blog may have different editorial policies that contradict mine, or they may have none at all)

Regardless of this, however, there is a school of thought that states unless you are writing a blog as an appropriately outrageous “character” everything you say is what you think in the real world. Which is clearly not true. The artificiality of the situation works against that; you find yourself writing in a particular style which isn’t necessarily the most natural one for you. Plus you are either shouting to an empty room or desperate to prove to yourself that someone is listening.

The same thing happens with poets and singer-songwriters leading to much misunderstanding. I’m all for self-mythologising but this can be taken too far.

What do you think? Do your blogging and real selves get along, or do they argue?