Running Blog Rhetoric

You know, blogging is a pretty interesting rhetorical exercise. Perhaps I’m overly self-conscious about all this; perhaps I analyze things a bit too much; perhaps normal people don’t use the word perhaps quite so much – but it’s been an interesting struggle to find an appropriate voice (or ethos) to suit the blogging environment. I have a feeling that most bloggers don’t pay much attention to this sort of thing – they just write, just say what they want to say, and the results are great. But I don’t feel like I have a singular voice or even a default voice – for me, tone is a conscious choice.

In fact, part of the reason I wanted to start blogging was to explore different writing voices and to find a more honest and less formal voice. My problem is that I spent well over a decade doing undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Lit. This is partly a blessing because I got a lot of practice writing and thinking and following clear lines of argument like highway lines in the night. But it was also partly a curse: much of the writing I did was rigid and formal. Over time, that structured formality became my voice. There have always been other voices in me waiting to speak (no, I don’t “hear voices”), but I never gave them a chance.

It seems to me, though, that the academic voice, while great for expository essays, doesn’t really fit with the ethos of the blogosphere – it’s as uncomfortable as showing up in a suit and tie to a surfer beach party: you can do it, and it’s okay, but you might be more comfortable in something a little less formal.

So each time I sit down to write a blog entry, I worry about voice. Part of the problem is that I don’t have a clear idea of audience – and if you don’t know who you’re writing to, then it’s difficult to settle into your writing self. Just as the tone you adopt when you talk to your friends is different from the tone you use with a stranger on the street, writing tone changes with audience. So who am I talking to in this blog? Is it friends and family, other runners, the general public? Each choice would make me write differently.

Part of me (the part that is sick of things like rhetorical theory) wants nothing to do with all of this analyzing – part of me just wants to write honestly and straightforwardly, without pretence, without scheming – to write long uninhibited honest sentences that unfold without hesitation across the empty potential of the screen like the sentences Kerouac wrote while criss-crossing the continent in the sad American night. But what’s so “honest” about that? Isn’t that just another writer’s mask? Mask after mask – is there anything but masks?

Wouldn’t it be crazy if qualities like “honesty” and “straightforwardness” and “candor” in writing were nothing more than rhetorical devices? Maybe there’s no essential self to find underneath all those masks, just various patterns of speech and behaviour. Hmmm. I’m not sure I want to think about that right now.

One of the things I love about some other running blogs is that they seem so unselfconscious. Bloggers will post the most mundane and banal things about their running without apology. And why not? After all, most of our lives are made up of the mundane and the everyday – if we can’t find meaning and value in those moments, then the bulk of our lives is just dead air.

It’s kind of like those French still-life paintings you see of bowls of fruit or a kitchen table strewn with crumbs and cheese and a cutting board, all lit with a faded afternoon light. At first, these paintings seem dull – where is the heroic action or the beautiful sweeping landscape or the sublime abstraction? But what they say to me is that the casual, the mundane, the trivial moments of life are infused with a quiet beauty if you take the time to look. Or even if the moments don’t hold any of their own beauty, they have the potential to be perceived as beautiful and meaningful in a subtle way.

So when I read that some runner in Minnesota had a pretty good long run on the weekend but her calves are a bit sore, I don’t click away from the page in disdain – instead, I find myself fascinated with the details. Part of the reason is that I too have had sore calves after certain long runs, so I can relate and sympathize. But that’s not the whole story. To me, that mundane blog detail is a little hint that someone out there is making choices about how best to live day-to-day in this bewildering world. Without all this philosophizing and analyzing and brooding, someone has gone out for a long run and now her calves are sore. It’s wonderful.

For me, though, it would be denying a big part of who I am to ignore all the crazy philosophizing (even if it makes people’s eyes roll). Maybe my writing is a bit stiff and formal and overly self-conscious, but why not? As long as it feels honest, then I’m okay with it. My voice may change over time as my ideas about audience and purpose change, but for now, I’ll just write what I feel like writing and try not to worry too much about it. (I’m lying, of course – I’ll always worry!)