Novels and Unicycles: Writing for Attention
“The blog has caused me none of the internal discord my novel has: photos of me aren’t me. Of course, a story is just a story, not me and of course all me, but ultimately it’s an entity so separate that I cannot count anyone’s embrace or rejection of it as anything personal. My novel had become my raison d’être—it was all I was worth and it terrified me to let it into the world. But in the blogosphere, I’m as anonymous as the next sixteen-year-old girl from Minnesota who’s just ripped into her delivery from Topshop and is showing off her new feathered bolero to her three readers, two of whom are probably her real-life friends. My pictures are viewed, judged, passed on, and forgotten. I am published, I am rejected and extolled, and I am still basically unknown. And I love it.”
