Spitting at the conventional wisdom: Some thoughts on (my) blogging

Whenever I encounter advice about blogging--at writers' conferences, on websites, etc.--the message is the same: Keep it brief and to the point. 500 hundreds words or less of punchy, provocative prose. A blog isn't the place to write a feature-length article, or to get bogged down in academic details. If it get's too long, break it up into a series.

I suppose that, were I to consistently follow this advice, I'd get more page views. More people would read my stuff. Fewer people would navigate to the page, realize my piece was the length equivalent of an academic article, and promptly navigate away. More people would come back for the next post.

And, of course, some of my more faithful readers and commenters would no longer be getting what initially drew them to this blog. Some of the readers who've said they were powerfully impacted by the substance of this blog might not have been so impacted.

So, call me a rebel, but I'm going to keep writing posts that are just too damned long. I spit in the face of conventional wisdom! Nya!

But seriously, I don't think there are any rigid "rules" of good blogging. There are blogs that aren't worth reading. But a blog, like a book, is a format that allows for a diversity of approaches. There are short books and long ones, academic books and popular ones, punchy, provocative books and deliberate, thoughtful ones. The key question is whether there's a niche for the kind of blogging that you do, whether what you have to say contributes in some small or large way to people's lives. And the beauty of blogging is this: If the only life that your blogging contributes to is your own, that's enough to justify doing it. It doesn't cost anything (or needn't), so if you enjoy doing it then who cares if there's an audience of 10 or an audience of 10,000?

Those of us who blog don't all do it for the same reasons.  And not only do different bloggers have different aims and motives for their blogging, but an individual blogger's aims and motives can change from post to post. This is certainly true of me. Sometimes I want to tell a story. Sometimes I want to develop a line of argument and solicit the kind of instant feedback that blogs offer. Sometimes I want to promote my books or other writings. Sometimes I have a viewpoint that I think will help other people live richer lives. Sometimes I have a distinction to make that I think will help people think more clearly on a topic. Sometimes I want to rail against perceived injustices. Sometimes I want to be funny.

As followers of this blog know, a lot of my blogging addresses religious issues in a philosophical way intended to spark substantive conversations--establishing a vanue where thoughtful disagreement and productive dialogue is possible (productive at least in the sense of hopefully advancing deeper understanding of divergent perspectives). While I try to be less technical and "academic" even in such blog posts than I would be in a philosophical article, I also try to be more rigorous than the 500-word-limit-punchy-post-rule allows. The kind of blogging I do in these cases may not generate mass-market appeal, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it.

Sometimes, however, I want to use the blog to participate in an important public conversation--and so I want the post to be appealing and accessible enough to actually be read by a wider audience.  I think of the conventional wisdom about blog length and content, not as some rule that you have to follow for your blog to be a good blog, but as advice that can be helpful to follow when you want your message to reach a wider audience. At the same time, I want such posts to introduce into the broader public discourse ideas and arguments and distinctions that I think will be actually be helpful and meaningful. In other words, I want what I say to provoke thought and conversation, hopefully across conventional divides and polarities.

But finding the balance between writing in a way that is likely to be heard and writing in a way that is true to my understanding of how controversial conversations ought to be approached--that's not easy. As I get increasingly focused on my current book project--on homosexuality and Christianity--I will undoubtedly be offering more blog posts that I hope will have an impact on an ongoing public conversation that's defined by strong opinions, polarization, and passion. And I'm not, in this conversation, a neutral party. I have my own commitments, my own passions. I'm not a mediator in this dialogue, but a voice for a certain view. But I want to be a voice that is clear and helpful, one that deepens understanding of the position I espouse and the reasons behind it. And I hope that my posts can stimulate productive reflection and conversation as opposed to simply reinforcing ideological divides.

One of the challenges on the issue of homosexuality and the church, however, is that I care about this issue because I care about the people who are affected by it, LGBT friends and family who I think have endured considerable hardship and suffering because of traditional views and the actions which follow from them.

And this means this isn't just an issue. There are some topics where "agreeing to disagree" is a way of showing mutual respect in the face of uncertainty. But given my understanding of what is at stake when it comes to such matters as the moral condemnation of homosexuality and opposition to same-sex marriage, to agree to disagree is to agree to let real people continue to be harmed.

When people you love are being harmed by a practice, sometimes your humanity demands something other than thoughtful conversation about the ethics of the practice. Imagine that a child is being deeply hurt by peer abuse, but those peers don't consider it abuse at all. To them, it's "no big deal." They're just having fun. In that case, there is an important place for standing with the victim and saying, "This is a big deal! This IS abusive. It's NOT okay!" Even if saying these things doesn't convince the abusers, it may be the very thing that the victim needs in order to feel less alone, in order to feel loved in the face of that treatment, in order not to be crushed by the abuse.

Sometimes a blog post can be a gesture of solidarity with the victims of social marginalization, a gesture that would lose its power if it were less passionate, if it were more academic, if it were more "open" to the perspective of those who believe the social marginalization is justified. How do you balance the desire to thoughtfully engage with those who disagree with you--in this case, with thouse who regard a marginalizing practice as morally right--with the desire to express solidarity with those who, in your experience, are deeply harmed by the practice?

I raise all these issues not because I have good answers, but because I want to be honest about some of my struggles on these matters.

I'm sure there's a blogging rule against such meta-level posts--and against using the term "meta-level" in a blog post. Call me a rebel.