Renaissance Molly

There are a few conventions all writers know. Be they writers of stories, blogs, or even twitter feeds, each writer understands some fundamental truths: You look dumb if you can't spell (I struggle with this since my natural gift is not, in fact, spelling, but thank God for spell check), avoid passive voice, engage your reader early on, be open to constructive criticism when editing, write often (you'll continue to improve), and read read read.

That all to be said, in the last year I've been working on writing a novel of my own in addition to reading through Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. I feel as though keeping the above mentioned conventions in mind, my writing has improved and continues to improve.

However, lately, with the new year upon us, my husband prompted me to begin to blog. Hesitant at first, because my personal feelings on blogs are overall severe, to say the least, I followed his enthusiastic lead and agreed.

Yet before beginning to write by first post I had a slight panic attack: Perhaps all my writing preparations and fundamentals in the last year won't help me.

What if reading Tolstoy won't help me to blog?!

But then a small, reasonable, relaxed voice inside me speaks up. The small reasonable relaxed voice that I imagine, if personified, has yoga pants on at all times and says things like "Namaste." This voice speaks up through the panic: "Relax, Molly, All things come together. Tolstoy can help you to blog, too."

How?! Here's how:

• One thing I love about Tolstoy is, although verbose, his books, be it Anna Karenina or War and Peace, are divided up into volumes which are, in turn, divided up into parts which are, in turn, divided up into chapters consisting of no more than 3 pages. You read at such a quick pace (as far as completing chapters) that you don't even notice you're reading a 5 pound book. (Well, that is until you're reading it in bed and your arms get tired and you nearly knock yourself unconscious because it slips from your hands onto your head at which time you contemplate taking out a life insurance policy specifically for "death by book"). That all to be said: Brevity makes the reading go faster. Blogs can be so long at times, people sorta go off on tangents. Thats why I hope to keep things concise and highlight big picture items for those who love to skim, like me.
• Reading Tolstoy is sorta like running a marathon or watching a TV Series. I think we have a perception that books should be easily converted to a single movie. As of late, directors and producers have been challenging this theory by breaking up the final installments of book series like Twilight, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games into two movies (not to mention Peter' Jackson's artistic interpretation of The Hobbit scraped thinly across 3 movies all by itself). My opinion on this varies and I'm not really here to talk about that. The point is that we sorta have this though of 1 book equal to 1 to 3 movies. I think Tolstoy is different - if one really wanted to adapt Anna Karenina or War and Peace they would need to think in terms of episodes of a drama not in terms of feature films. I believe blogging is similar: episodes and articles in favor of some long continuous novel. This will challenge me, but I think it will ultimately help me improve my writing overall.
• Modern readers are intimidated by War and Peace. My coworker told me that she wants to read it, and she owns it, but she's not yet started because ultimately she's sorta daunted by the sheer length of War and Peace. We're so used to relatively small novels now that the idea of reading a book that is 1300 pages long sorta makes us sick to the stomach. But 19th century novels were not published as a whole like we see them today. Similar to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Leo Tolstoy's novels were published in serial. Originally, the first part of War and Peace was published in the Russian Messenger, a literary journal of the time, under the name 1805. Tolstoy did a great many revisions before publishing the work in its entity under the now recognized name of War and Peace. But he did not publish it as the massive single book we recognize today. He published it as four separate books. For More info, click here. War and Peace, therefore is comparable to the length of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, and The Return of the King. I believe that if a publisher put all four books of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Series in one bound book, readers would be equally intimidated. That all to be said, readers, be they modern or even contemporaries of Tolstoy, enjoy reading in reasonable doses rather than giant voluminous books. I believe one reason why people enjoy blogs so well is that it is a weekly, biweekly, or monthly snippet of reading which does not require a giant investment on the part of the reader.

There are a great many details I learn from reading Tolstoy which aid me in other areas, but for now, those are the big ticket items related to this blogging experience. It is, perhaps, these conventions which will drive my blogging style and which will greatly affect how I present my ideas in this medium. Ultimately, I'm new at this, so exercise patience. However one cannot hope to gain skill or experience in something by avoiding the task.

So please, feel welcome to my blog. I hope to share with my readers a grand array of ideas and activities which interest me in the hopes of not only enriching myself through the experience but by reaching out to a community of people seeking to do the same thing.