How to talk about other people on your blog: 7 Simple Guidelines---Hump Day Hmm for February 13, 2008
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...