Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Touring the Blogosphere

Now that I have my own space, my clean white piece of virtual paper, I've been looking around the net to see what other people are writing. All my interests, cooking, photography, herb gardening, travel, sailing, needlework, classic cinema and the reading and writing of mystery fiction have been written about on some truly outstanding and professional looking blogs. I am thoroughly intimidated.
I am reminded of a scene in one of my favorite novels, The Caine Mutiny. Willie Keith, the hero, thinks it might be nice to have his own initialed coffee mug. He takes a standard china mug from the wardroom, painstakingly carves out the initials "W.K." and fills the letters in with blue paint. He goes to bed happy with his creation, leaving it on the wardroom shelf for others to admire. But when he enters the wardroom the next morning, he finds that his shipmates have created mug masterpieces of their own. There are mugs with gothic lettering, Old English script, fantastic animal shapes twisted to form initials. Willie's own mug now seems a poor thing compared to these new ones. Disgusted, he throws his mug into the sea.
I'm still not sure what I want to write here, but I know I want to write something. And no matter how awe-inspiring other people's blogs are, I'm not going to give up and throw my mug into the sea.