Meta-blogging

Here’s an interesting theme that has come up more than once in recent conversations and I thought it would make a good question for the bloggy peeps. I was taking pictures of a family recently, and the client mentioned a particular photo of the boys that she’d admired. She then said something about how the boys always seem so well-behaved and willing to pose for my camera, and how did I get them to do that?

I laughed. I might have snorted. It was hard not to guffaw. I was thinking about that particular photo, and the day we took it, and how just a few minutes before I snapped it, I’d been harranguing them, nearly growling with frustration. “Honest to goodness, I ask so little of you, could you not for JUST ONE MINUTE behave yourselves and STOP TORTURING EACH OTHER?” By the end, I was definitely using my shrieky voice, the one you try not to use on the front lawn. Yeah.

Would you have guessed it?

And then there’s this one. See that expression on Tristan’s face? I think I threatened him with a time out until he was forty if he didn’t smarten up and get that look off his face. (The great irony is that even though I was ready to blow a gasket with frustration at the time, I’ve come to love this picture and it’s now one of my favourites. But I was on the dark road between exasperated and furious at the time.)

So the snapshot is a carefully constructed illusion, really. It shows what I want you to see, not the reality of the situation. Which ties really nicely into a conversation I had via e-mail with someone who has been lurking on my blog (and a few others, from the sounds of it) for quite some time. She was wondering about the way bloggers filter our lives for online consumption, and whether by not addressing or glossing over the ugly bits (I love how she called it “the yelling and tantrums and defiance and moments of sheer bad parenting”) we bloggers might be painting an idealized version of family life — one that is not only unattainable but also unrealistic. She was careful to say that she liked how I do address those frustrations and bad times, and other bloggers do, too, but that many do not. In fact, she said, she’d almost stopped reading some blogs because of this. She said that of course bloggers have no responsibility for the mental health of our readers, but wondered if I’d ever had the sense that some people might idealize our lives.

Again with the snorts of laughter. Idealizing THIS? Ha! It’s especially snort-worthy since I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a bad place as far as my own patience levels are concerned lately. But it’s such an interesting question, don’t you think? I have noticed that some bloggers do only blog about the good stuff, and there’s a whole lot of blogs I avoided especially a couple of years ago when blogging about what an awful parent you are was chic.

This ties in really well with a theme I’ve been considering recently, which is the idea of the identity we portray online and how accurately that matches the person we are. I think that over the years I’ve actually become more like the character version of me I created online: more confident, more outgoing, and generally a better version of me. Is that weird? I wonder how much of that is just maturity, and a direction I would have gone anyway, and how much of that is a kind of “fake it ’til you make it” sort of development, where I’ve actually convinced myself that I am less of a geeky dork than I really am.

I also find this an interesting topic because I’m still struggling to find a comfortable place in my blogging between disclosure and protection. As the boys get older, I’m finding their stories are less mine to tell, and while I’d absolutely LOVE to tell you the story of the conversation I had about reproduction recently (it ended with one boy exclaiming “AWKWARD!” in a singsong voice when he got an inkling of what the actual mechanics were, and gosh I’d love to tell you more!) but– I’m not sure I can tell those stories with same blissfully ignorant abandon I used to, back in the day.

Anyway, there are half a dozen themes in here I would have liked to explore a bit more, but I want to know what you guys think. Do you think there is balance in the parenting blogosphere? Do bloggers paint a realistic portrait of family life, or do they idealize it? Should we be cognizant of how the stories we tell might be perceived and internalized? Have you ever been self-conscious about how you portray your family — or yourself? How closely does your online persona reflect who you are offline?

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Better late than never, here’s my third (and final!) post-Blissdom Canada post. (If you missed them, click for posts about how I reconnected with my blog and day 1 takeaway messages.)

The first session of the second day was, for me, one of the highlights of the conference. The session was called “Taking your craft to the next level” and was a panel discussion that featured one of my first bloggy friends, Karen Green, along with Aidan Morgan and Angella Dykstra. I loved a lot of this session, including the fact that they went beyond simply blogging/writing and also talked about photography and videography. Dear Blissdom Canada organizers: More like this next year please!

I was completely endeared when Karen started off by stating why she got into blogging in the first place: because she wanted to be a magazine columnist and nobody was hiring her to do that. Me too!!!!! Later in the session, Karen made my day by saying that mine was the first blog she ever read, and I was flattered nearly to death when I tweeted that and several others confirmed that mine had been the first blog they ever read as well.

Here’s a few of the best messages I heard during the rest of the session, once again pilfered more or less verbatim from my own twitterstream. (Parenthetical comments are my after-the-fact editorial asides.)

• Nobody will judge you for the size of your dash but you do need to learn to spell. (Can I get a hallelujah on this?)
• When asked how to find inspiration, Aidan Morgan said, “I thrive on dissonance.”
• Talk to the people who inspire you and learn from them.
• Know your audience — and then try to ignore them. (This is so true, and so hard to do. I’ve lately lost the ability to forget everyone is listening, and have been struggling to overcome this. I miss the candidness of oblivious blogging.)
• Don’t get hung up on the metrics. SEO won’t help you improve your craft. Also, don’t lose your joy.
• What you are doing is bigger than the sound of applause. (I need to print this out and stick it on my monitor.)

At the end of the session, there was a really amazing and way. too. quick set of tips to improve your SEO from Aidan that I can’t find now but will try to dig up and share with you.

Can you see why I left the session (and the conference) vowing to blog like it is 2006? So much of this is exactly what I want to do, what I’ve always strived to do as a blogger. I can’t tell you how much I loved this session — it made the conference for me.

The next session had a lot less practical information, but my sides hurt from laughing by the time it was over. It was a panel discussion called, “What’s in a brand? The art of defining yourself and your creative work” featuring Kimberley Seldon, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Dee Brun, and Patty Sullivan, and moderated by Mabel’s Labels founder Julie Cole. It was nice to see the session start with one of my friend Justin’s “extreme family portraits” of Julie Cole’s family.

I didn’t tweet a lot of takeaways from this session largely because I was laughing too hard. Who knew Gail Vaz-Oxlade was such a cut-up? She’s also an amazingly strong woman and I loved her basic theme of doing what’s important to her, staying true to herself, and not giving a &#@ what others think. Except, instead of &#@ she said pretty much every swear you could think of. I loved all of her anecdotes, including the one where she told her editor at the Globe and Mail that she writes his column while she’s sitting on the can, and that she turned down a TV show three times until they came back and completely capitulated to her terms. Clearly, the only person influencing Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s brand is Gail Vaz-Oxlade!

The few useful tweets I did manage to get out included:

• Know yourself, know what you’re willing to walk away from, know what you’re willing to do.
• Be true to yourself and be real or others will see through you and you will lose credibility.
• Don’t try to create a personal brand without knowledge of yourself and where you want to be.
• Every 140 characters comes back to you, for good or bad.
• Your bio is a powerful tool and all your social media sites should have one, but “PR friendly” in a bio says “send me free stuff.”
• If you don’t like how I raise my kids, that’s your problem (from Patty Sullivan, host on CBC Kids.)
• Use the filter of “what am I putting out there” before you press send.
• Don’t be so set in your vision of your brand that you don’t adapt based on the feedback you get through social media.
• If you want to work with brands, you have to be cognizant of your behaviour regarding swearing, oversharing, etc.

The final panel of the conference was another highlight for me. It was a discussion called, “To Publish Or Not To Publish: Taking Your Writing Beyond The Blog (Or Not)” featuring more of my oldest bloggy friends, including Ann Douglas, Jen Reynolds, Theresa Albert, and Nadine (Scarbiedoll) Silverthorne. This was the most practical of all the sessions I attended, with professional and concrete insights into a lot of various publishing options open in the Canadian marketplace.

Jen Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Family magazine, said a pitch to her should be succinct at 300 words, but don’t spill your whole story. She wants to build it with you.

She also noted that Canadian Family is still paying the same rate as 15 years ago, approximately $1 per word.

Nadine Silverthorne, online editor for TodaysParent.com, says online rates are approximately 50% less than print rates.

Jen Reynolds also said to know your strength and match it to a medium.

Nadine, who was a personal blogger long before an online editor, asked the poignant questions, “How much do you love your blog?” and “Are you willing to give up your voice for money?” (This is one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to overly monetize this blog!)

Ann Douglas, author extraordinaire, offered these tips on book pitches: a book pitch needs an executive summary and a sales pitch on why YOU must be the one to write it. Address the competition, and explain why you stand out. A pitch also needs a complete bio, and a marketing plan that showcases your creativity. (Clearly, writing the book is only half the hard work! I had no idea.)

And how exciting is this? Jen Reynolds surprised everyone with a spontaneous offer of $700 for a 700 word article on finding your bliss that she’ll publish in Canadian Family.

The panel also put together a handout that Ann posted on her blog: To Publish or Not to Publish.

I should really go back and put in links to everyone’s blogs — but I’m clean out of time. Maybe later? But you can find them all online, I’m sure.

After all the years of wondering whether I’d find any value in attending one of these blog conferences, I think the answer is a resounding yes. I got to meet so many people I have admired for years, and connect with many others. I learned a little bit, but I was hugely inspired and reminded of the things that I love about blogging and how most of them revolve around connection, community and storytelling. That’s why I’ve been saying that Blissdom Canada 2011 inspired me to blog like it’s 2006.

Here’s three quick suggestions to the Blissdom Canada organizers for next year:

1. Hashtags for each session would make it a lot easier to follow the sessions in progress and/or catch up on the ones you missed.
2. Donation bins for food banks or something similar would be a great way for people to share swag items they can’t or won’t use. There was no room in my luggage for a loaf of bread and box of crackers, and Fisher-Price gave away a lot of diapers that might not get used but could be great to donate to someone in need.
3. More debate would be good. Most of the panelists seemed to all be on the same page. I’d like to see a “I only blog for social good” voice take on a “I blog for the freebies and I’m proud of it” type of debate, or something similar.

I hope these notes were helpful! And if you’ve never been to one of these social media conferences before, you absolutely should go — at least once.

Karen, I will never use an m-dash again without thinking of you!

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