Small Strokes Big Oaks

Rebecca (right) with her friend, Anne

Bio
I’m Rebecca Welzenbach, 24, currently of Ann Arbor Michigan.  I graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in English Literature in 2007 and just completed my Master’s of Science in Information with a focus on Archives and Records Management at the University of Michigan.  I currently work in the UM Library with the digitization of library materials and with electronic scholarly publishing.
Blog: http://littlehelpplease.blogspot.com/

1. Define the online feminist blogging community.
The feminist blogging community is not something I had thought about, as such, until this project was defined and proposed.  The blogs I read happen to be mostly written by women, and so it’s not surprising that they happen to write more about issues of concern to women than men do.

I suppose the presence of an online community is as beneficial to feminists as it is to any other group: it makes it easy to communicate across long distances, to try out ideas and get feedback on them, and to develop and maintain contact with those who have similar interests. I’m not sure that this is specifically beneficial to feminists anymore than any other group, other than that women seem to like blogging–I can think of more women than men who have blogs, and the men I can think of tend to do more link posting than personal writing–so perhaps this medium is particularly suited to women’s conversations.  Or maybe it’s suited to young people’s conversations, or writers’ conversations….I guess it’s hard to say.

My blog is about advice columns–feminist issues are not my explicit or deliberate focus, but they are relevant to my blog in interesting ways.  Most of the major syndicated advice columnists are women, who are guiding their readers (men and women alike) by setting the “norms” for marriage, family, careers, relationships, neighborliness, etiquette, etc.  I did not start this blog because I wanted to investigate the development of social mores as delineated by unsung female leaders in the media (ha!).  I just read the columns compulsively while drinking my morning coffee and wanted to comment on them publicly.  But over the last year or so I’ve read the feminist-oriented blogs of several other women, and their focus and perspective have cast an interesting light on much of what I read and write about, and on the whole world of advice columns in general.

As far as a community turning online writing into a commodity to be sold, I’m not sure.  Isn’t it the dream of nearly every writer that their work would become a commodity, i.e., something others are willing to pay for?  A defined community increases the audience for a blog, I suppose, which increases the likelihood (or pipe dream) that it could earn millions from ad revenues (as opposed to personal online journals written in isolation, where there’s neither hope nor promise of an audience or a revenue).  I guess I don’t see this as a good or bad thing, or even that different of a thing than nonline publishing (yes, nonline).  It cuts out the middleman of the publisher who makes the calls, of course, but it’s still true that some writing will command an audience and turn a profit, and other writing will not.   Writing is (and has always been) both professional and expressional…. I guess I don’t see it being commodified in any particularly surprising or damaging way that it hasn’t been for centuries.

2. Tell me about how you came to be a blogger.
I first started blogging my senior year of high school–before Facebook and MySpace, everyone had Xanga!  Mostly my friends and I used it as a tool to keep in touch as we all went off to separate colleges, or when we left school for semesters abroad.

When Facebook came in, the blogging plummeted (at least in my world). I tried to start up again in grad school, but I had nothing to say, and no one was reading.  Last summer I started fresh with a new blog that had a narrower focus: it specifically looks at and responds to the problems and solutions published in advice columns.

3. Tell me about your blogging experience now.
I write about what I read in the advice columns and comment on whether or not I agree with the advice.  I started because, well, I read a lot of advice columns, and I talk about them a lot.  When I realized how many sentences I was starting with “today in Dear Abby….” I thought, maybe there are other people who actually WANT to hear about this–and have something to say about it themselves.  I was hoping others would like to read it and respond, but I also just wanted a way to record what has, totally accidentally, become a bit of an obsessive hobby. I’ve followed the major syndicated columnists since I was in jr. high (oh, the fateful day Ann Landers died!) and so have noticed patterns of trends, changes in the columnists’ style and opinions as they age, and issues that crop up again and again…and again.  The blog gives me a chance to record that and reflect on it a bit–to do something with all this background in advice columns I have, which is completely and totally useless, except for writing a blog about advice columns.

Although personal, journal-style blogs are still going strong (and even have great success if you happen to have dramatic story to tell and the imagination to dream it big, like the pioneer woman [http://thepioneerwoman.com/]) I think that “niche” blogs are where it’s at these days in terms of identifying and building community. There’s so much information out there, you have to have a focus. Either it’s “my life” or “my favorite topic.”  Unless you’re a fantastic writer and shameless self-promoter, only the latter will draw an audience broader than your family and close friends. (In fact, you have to be a fantastic writer and a shameless self-promoter anyway, but having a focus that interests people who don’t even know you doesn’t hurt).

A specific topic tells people what to expect at your blog–and most likely the kind of person you are and the kind of people who read what you write–it pre-defines the community by establishing up front what you have in common.

4. Tell me about a time you were misread or misunderstood on your blog.
I don’t have a specific instance in mind…I haven’t had an experience where I’ve really been reamed out over a misunderstanding (mostly because my audience is simply not that big, and mostly consists of friends).  I tend to edit and re-edit over the course of the day (as described below), and try to work out confusing or misleading writing along the way.  Of course there’s no guarantee I always succeed, or that readers will get what I mean…but I tend to do a lot of self-editing, trying to look for and head-off possible misunderstandings before everyone reads the post.

5. Describe your process of writing online.
I read the columns each day and pick the one that’s most interesting, controversial, entertaining, moving, or relevant to how I happen to be feeling.  When I first started the blog, I’d choose excerpts from the column–now I basically just place the whole letter and response in my blog and add commentary–either after, or interpolated throughout the text of the letters.  I write, read, edit, read, post, read, edit, post, read, edit, post, read, edit, post, read.  I pity the fool who gets some kind of alert every time I update a post (is that an option you can sign up for?).  I like that I can change what I wrote, because I often write my initial post at 6:30 a.m.  Obviously several hours later when I’m more awake, I might be feeling more eloquent, or I might want to refine a thought.  My posts are imported to Facebook, and it drives me nuts that I might edit a post 5 times, but my Facebook note still shows the old, imperfect version.

I try not to change anything that pertains to a comment I’ve received….my comment volume is very low, though (0-10 comments on any given post, 3 of which are usually my responses to comments), so this is rarely an issue.

6. Describe your online reading habits.
I don’t do a great job of finding interesting reading material online at all.  I typically click back and forth between Facebook, my email, and my blog (which links to other people’s blogs, which I also follow).  I will read what friends have posted, or I’ll peruse newspapers.  If I find something good, I’ll share it on Facebook…that’s about it.

Finding and sharing can create a community, although it doesn’t always.  I have friends who I know will always post the weirdest celebrity news…they post it to the world at large (typically on Facebook), but can anticipate a certain group who will read it and respond.

Communities spring up, I guess, around sources of information.  So someone who does a lot of finding and sharing is at the heart of a community–it’s about the topic they’re sharing, but also about their perception and interest in it…others who are interested both in the topic and how the finder shares it choose to participate.

So maybe a community needs two major features: a common interest and a common way of experiencing/expressing that interest.  Hm.

You can follow Rebecca on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rwelzenb.  You can also read her comments on feminism from the Undomestic 10 interview by clicking here.
For more information on the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community project, and to see all of the interviews, click here.  Have something to add?  Comment or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.