Stories of words

Wow nearly 50 posts to read from the SL Bloggers Mix 'n Match challenge. I haven't finished going through all of them yet, I admit!

What interests me most when I read the posts (those that I have read) is how these posts reveal so much about the versatility of each blogger. You see, all of us -- except for Ari Blackthorne -- were assigned topics not of our own choosing. (As luck would have it, Ari had two submissions and one of them happened to fall back into his lap!)

It's one thing to write about something that's familiar or which we WANT to write about; it's another thing entirely to write about something completely alien, and possibly something we are completely disinterested in. That's where you get to see how versatile a writer the person is, because it's very, very hard to make a piece of writing interesting and engaging if you yourself aren't engaged in the subject. It will show in your writing, trust me ;)

That's why blogs are great; we get to write about the things that interest us the most, or that we're most passionate about, and that interest & passion shines through our words. It's what makes the readers come back again and again, because that kind of passion is very attractive. It reaches out through the words on the screen, grabs the reader, and draws him into your world. It enables the reader to see your world as you see it. It makes the reader want to inhabit the same world you inhabit. That's the power of passion, combined with the power of words. It's a fearsome combination.

So as I read through the blogs, I looked for flashes of passion. It's not enough to be erudite and articulate. You could write the most beautiful piece with the most eloquent descriptions, but it's going to feel flat and lifeless without that element of passion. The passion is crucial.

And passion was most apparent where bloggers used the topics to tell their own stories, like Skinkie who discussed the economics of freebies from her own perspective as a content creator, and Cat Magellan who shared with us her experiences of living and playing in SL with her RL significant other. Of course. Have you ever known anyone who didn't get animated when they started talking about themselves, their families, their life experiences? The people who don't are strange ones indeed... better be careful of them! lol

But Torley took it one step further in writing about living as a different gender in SL. Not only did he tell his story, he expanded on the topic and showed us that the issue at stake isn't one of RL or SL gender, but so much more. He took the topic, ran with it, made it work for him. When a person embraces a topic and makes it his own... that's the mark of a truly great writer. (He likely had an edge though, in the sense that this topic probably isn't new to him -- he said he's tried all kinds of avatars since he first rezzed in 2004, and he's probably thought a lot about how they have helped him express himself and discover more about his own identity as a person.)

Tymmerie's post was another that really struck me. I thought her extremely creative to have approached her subject by using Maslow's theory -- which I've never heard of, obviously there have been serious gaps in my education -- as a framework for her discussion. "What groups you can't live without and why" actually sounds, to me at least, like a really dry and plodding topic. EDIT: Let me explain: A lot of people would simply have listed out their groups and talked about what each one does or what each one is about. I was envisioning that kind of post but of course I should have known that Tymmerie would never be that predictable. In fact, I'm amazed that she managed to make it so interesting and funny and clever!

If you'd like to critique my post, it can be found at Brandy Rasmuson's blog ;)