Letters from Rona

I don't know anyone in Novi Sad, most likely will never go there and had to Google the place to find out that it's in Serbia. So I can't help but wonder how it happened that on May 14 some stranger in Novi Sad set out for an online stroll and ended up on this website. We're not talking just a peek in my virtual doorway. No, this was a pull-up-a-chair kind of visit, in which the mystery guest actually read these pages for 11 minutes and 47 seconds---a not-inconsiderable sojourn in Blogland, where the restless and the jaded tend to flit from site to site in a never-ending search for the must-see of the moment.

When I started blogging almost two years ago, I pictured a vast potential audience: loyal fans from my decade as Editor-in-chief of Chatelaine, Canada's best-read magazine for women. "I look forward to your column every month," they used to say. "It's always the first page I turn to." Ah, the hubris of the first-time blogger!

Truth is, most of my original target readers still don't know about my blog. In practical terms, I haven't met my expectations. Emotionally, though, I've surpassed them. I've attracted a new, albeit smaller group of readers, mostly American, who had never heard of me or Chatelaine until they made their way here via Google and decided to keep coming back. They're not looking for recipes, health advice or any of the other time-honoured attractions that have made Chatelaine a powerhouse. They didn't receive a gift subscription from mom. They simply want to read what's on my mind, right after I felt moved to say it, and maybe add an insight of their own. So if you're one of my regulars, you deserve to know that our connection here is among the great pleasures of my life as a writer.

I've been writing for most of my life, but until now I insisted on tangible rewards: the prizes I won in high school competitions, the cheques I collected from countless magazines as an editor or freelance contributor. Now I'm finding out what writing can be when the only goal is satisfaction. What an adventure it's been! As a blogger, I never ask myself, "Is there a market for this?" or "Will the editor like this anecdote?" I don't have to ask anyone's permission for precious column inches and then wait months to see the piece appear with my favourite sections truncated or missing. I just write and post, with only one certainty: surprise.

Maybe I'll uncover an insight I didn't know I had. Maybe one of you will share a thought that delights or touches me. Mrs. Tarquin Bisquitbarrel (real name a mystery) used to call her mop-topped son Mr. Ringlet. M.C., who recently lost her husband, finds the presence of his ashes consoling. Deb Pascoe mailed her 25-year sobriety medallion to Phil Collins, whose music she credits with keeping her sane; he returned her treasure with a personal note saying she was the one who'd earned it.

As for my visitor from Novi Sad, she still hasn't returned. Not so far, anyway. That's how it often goes in Blogland. People find you by sheer serendipity, stick around for a while if you capture their attention, then go forth on their virtual ramblings. They won't circle back unless something compels them to do so. If it's not the importance they attach to your knowledge (about gardening, cooking or raising pet water dragons), it will have to be the sheer appeal of your voice---a bond that's by turns wonderfully intimate and dauntingly fragile.

Blogs have an even higher failure rate than restaurants, according to a recent New York Times story. We bloggers all tend to start out with the same crazy fantasy: hordes of traffic, an advertising windfall, an income of sorts from doing what we love instead of serving corporate masters. Ninety-five percent of us quit, chastened by a few months of no visitors, no money and---shockingly---nothing to say. But here I am, still busking in cyberspace. Sometimes I write with music in my head, Gillian Welch singing her lovely "Everything is Free:" Everything I've ever done/ Gonna give it away/ Someone hit the big score/ They figured it out/ That we're gonna do it anyway/ Even if it doesn't pay

So hello, Kamloops! Lemon Grove and Rainbow City, are you listening? Steveston, Bangalore, Duvernay, Rio Piedras...this one's for you, wherever you are. And you too, Novi Sad. You too.

Posted by Rona June 15, 2009 @ 1:07 PM. File in The writing life

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