Welcome to another monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group. More than likely you know why you're here, but in the event you are unaware of what I'm referring to you can visit the blog of Alex J. Cavanaugh for more information and the list of bloggers who are members of the group. All are invited just so you contribute your own #IWSG post on each first Wednesday of the month. And now for my thoughts of this month: When I'm Dead and Gone
My title might infer that this post will be about the legacy we leave behind as authors or whatever it is that we would like to be known for, but this is not the case. For those who haven't been following my most recent posts, the "When I'm Dead and Gone" title refers to a series I've been doing about the topics of death and zombies. It's a seasonal theme related to Halloween and Day of the Dead (November 1st) that revolves around my current Battle of the Bands post that uses the song of the same title. I'm tabulating votes until tomorrow (Thursday November 6th) and announcing the winner on my Friday post. If you haven't voted yet I hope you will by clicking on this link.
Over the past year I've seen a number of posts suggesting that blogging is dead or dying with various reasons mentioned. Likewise, there have been the doomsayers portending the eventual demise of Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media.
Historically though haven't we heard much the same dire predictions made for other things? Vaudeville would be killed by motion pictures, movies by television, books by electronic data delivery, and on and on. Some things did die for the reasons cited or for other reasons. Trends run in cycles and often lose adherents. Things come and go as new generations become interested and then eventually move on to the next new big thing.
Same goes for literature genres. Westerns, science fiction, detective stories, and other genres have seen peaks and lows of popularity over the years. None have gone away entirely and a reading audience will probably remain ensconced for years to come as long as the writing is worthwhile and sometimes even if it isn't. Boy wizards and romantic vampires may be with us for a very long time though perhaps their popularity will wane as the next novelty enters the limelight.
If blogging dies then those of us who blog will have to find something else to do. If the genre in which we write no longer sells books then we need to find another topic to write about. It's not a good idea to just roll over and stop creating. The fact is that if we believe that something that we do, something for which we had a passion, has died then perhaps we helped to kill it.
Nothing completely dies, it merely changes. You might have learned something akin to that in physics or some other science course. The Law of Conservation of Mass is what it's called. My body may cease to function in the way that we know it, but I continue to exist in some form. There are memories. There is whatever I left behind of what I accrued in my life. There is what I created.
Come to think of it a lot of this does have to do with legacy, but that's not really the main aspect I'm thinking about for the moment. My thoughts of dying are more in the metaphorical sense. Sometimes we can die but still be living and breathing, functioning in some sense of what is considered normal. Almost zombie-like, but not in the gory flesh-eating sense. Zombie brained and blinded by disappointment, disillusionment, and other dis and dats.
That's dying in living. That's watching whatever it is that you once enjoyed and wanted to share with others fade from your grasp. Just because something is no longer popular doesn't mean we have to stop doing it and consider it dead.
There was a time when skinny neckties were in fashion. Then guys started wearing wide ties and skinny ties looked out of place. Once when I was traveling I came upon an old department store in a small town that was going out of business. They had a lot of old out-dated merchandise at extremely cheap prices. Skinny ties were ten cents each so a coworker and I bought several along with white dress shirts that were at a clearance price of fifty cents each. We started wearing these as a sort of uniform while we loaded and unloaded our equipment truck as we traveled from town to town. It made for a cheap uniform that didn't look half bad and it didn't matter if we messed the clothes up. Then I noticed that a lot of the punk bands that were gaining popularity were dressed similarly in the promo shots of them I'd see in the magazines. My friend and I were almost fashionable with our makeshift cheap uniforms.
So what's the point of that story. Heck if I know. You can make of it what you will. I guess I meant it to be an example of what I was trying to say in this post. And if someday my blog grows out of fashion I can think of it as a skinny tie. Maybe that interpretation works.
Do you keep up with trends and fashions? Are you doing NANO this year? Have the comments and visits to your blog dropped since NANO began this past Saturday?
