Writing for an audience is scary, even if the audience is invisible (and tiny). For me, it was a battle between the desire to publish and the desire for privacy.I’m currently obsessed with the idea of exposure. That is, the emotional and intellectual exposure that blogging requires. Unless I really wanted to strip this blog down, I couldn’t really keep me out of it.

Still, it’s strange to me that blogs are compared often to diaries. I think they’re more similar to letters: directed outward to another person, writing and sending a letter is an extroverted act. A diary is a record of private reflection: it’s introverted, meant for the self.

So blogs are public letters, more than they are diaries, and they have the potential to be a volley of communication.

Trouble arises when private, diary-like blog posts are published for everybody to read. This arises in Penelope Trunk’s recent interesting blog post, which discusses the motivation behind blogging and Emily Gould’s fascinating story of writing for Gawker — another case study of “internet fame”. (Note: needs a free NYT account).

When blogging for the public, what’s up for grabs? Personal relationships, evidently… if you want to risk that.

I’d say that a good blog is a mix of extroversion and introversion, or a balance of the public and filtered with the private and personal: combining the balance and veneer of a letter with the insight of a private journal.

On a dead serious note, blogging has been helpful to get over my ego. Self-consciousness and fear of error are the biggest enemies of action. In deciding to blog, I decided I’d rather do something and make certain mistakes, rather than not do it at all.

It was easy enough to do once I realized how many blogs there are out there (it’s such a huge number I won’t dare quote it, and the number is growing all the time). My blog is so tiny.

The gradual process of relaxing, being unafraid to make mistakes (they are just natural and human, after all), has freed up so much potential. Now I take myself less seriously, I take criticism less seriously.

Writing for an audience is scary, even if the audience is invisible (and tiny). For me, it was a battle between the desire to publish and the desire for privacy and non-presence. It might be true that bloggers are egotists, but first they were brave when they put their ego aside to press “publish.”