Julie Pippert: Using My Words

I'm really really glad I missed BlogHer this year. Every account makes it sound like a Self-Righteous Fest rather the the community building, sharing, learning, and fun I expect from that event. Then, that spilled over into the rest of the online community, and now moms who blog have garnered a reputation for being greedy, graspy harpies who cage fight for minor pieces of swag, like deranged parents beating one another up for the last Cabbage Patch doll. Way to further the rep. Even if people had fun -- and good for you -- clearly there was a major undercurrent I had been calling Culture Clash (which provided private amusement because it dredged up funny old 80s bands to mind) but have now begun calling the Whore Wars. You can subtitle it: That Same Old Mean Girl Judge and Jury Fest We've Had Since 5th Grade. It's because yesterday someone played the whore card in reference to the mombloggers + PR + Review = Sometimes Profiting/Being Compensated While Blogging. Don't be...

Personal blogs are primarily memoirs in the making. Even professional, topical and niche blogs rely on the art of personalizing and storytelling. So as we tell our stories, how do we tell them? Who do we include? And how do we include them? William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well *, says a key challenge of writing personal history is focusing too much on victimhood rather than forgiveness. I believe that's true. Each personal history extends beyond ourselves. It's impossible to have a personal history that doesn't, at some point, require talking about other people and their role in your story. That creates a challenge: how do we write about others, ethically? Let's be honest: we all like to see inside other people's lives, and a little drama goes a long way to capturing our interest and emotions. But we can only stare at a train wreck for so long, and then we avert our eyes. Consider the popularity of feel-good movies; people love a story that overcomes. They lo...