Despite having had a successful career as a secondary-school teacher, I was never a good student.

Rather than studious, I was selective.

If I liked the subject, I participated. It didn’t matter if the teacher was inspired or if the resources were effective.

If the subject involved reading, writing, analysing, debating or acting, I was engaged.

Blog School, the fortnightly workshops run by PublicityShip and my home-away-from-home, is ticking all of those boxes.

But when we received our fortnightly Blog School assignment, I felt a moment of panic I haven’t felt since high-school mathematics.

How would I profile my blogging audience?

My sisters and I have made an art-form out of analysing ourselves and others. We categorise, interpret, assess and profile people more effectively than the FBI.

These abilities, often described by my husband as “women’s witchery”, are an essential component of our consultancy and training business.

But as I confronted my latest assignment, inspiration was slow to visit.

Only after much introspective examination (actually swimming and cocktails at a resort in SW Australia) did I decide that the only effective approach was to ask my audience to profile themselves.

Drum roll…

Who are you?

The People on My Block

When I talk about my “friends” in my posts, exposing aspects of their lives to the universe, I tend to give them a fuzzy form.

To preserve their anonymity I blur their pictures at the edges, until sometimes they are not even recognisable to themselves.

But now I have to apply this process in reverse, and “de-fuzz” my readership…

I think of my readers as the People on My Block, who never come empty-handed when they visit. They always have something to say. They bring personality and humour to our conversations.

We know each other by our comments, rather than our bios. They feel familiar, yet there is so much more to learn about each other. They are the ones who I think of when I’m wondering what to write next.

Julia, from a Blinding Heart, recently wrote about “The Muse on the Milk Carton“, wondering where her muse, potentially frightened off when she was hit by lightning, had gone. But the People on my Block, encircling my laptop in all their shadowy forms, are my muse.

My readers are a collective form of inspiration that keeps drawing something from me, even when I think there is nothing there to give.

But now I have to give my muse a shape.

I have to describe this “person” with all the accuracy of a police report… From “fuzzy form” to finely defined.

So I ask you to once again to help me draw an inspired picture.

Drum roll…

Is this you?

Pop Quiz

Below are ten questions I’d like you to consider. Feel free to answer any or all of them in any way you see fit!

1. How would you describe yourself in three words to a stranger?
2. What do you admire most about yourself?
3. What would you change about yourself if you could wake up tomorrow with the job done?
4. What would you change about the world if you could wake up tomorrow with the job done?
5. What is the most exciting thing about being the age you are now?
6. What do you miss most about childhood?
7. What is your greatest fear?
8. What is your greatest achievement?
9. What three activities do you wish you could do every day?
10. Who would you like to have move in next door to you and why?

Thanks for giving shape to the fuzzy form.

I look forward to learning more about you - and advancing to the top of the class off your efforts…

Note: Any information you kindly share will be used only for the purpose of getting me an A+ at Blog School!

What do you think of when you read the words: talk, chatter, gossip, discuss and chat?

Do you think of women? You know - the girls, ladies, madams, damsels, broads, dames, dolls, gals, chicks???

If the stereotype is true, women should be taking to blogging and blog commentary like ducks to water.

Give them a cup of coffee and they can chat all day long with their virtual neighbours over the fence of every community with a web address.

But is this the reality? Are women, with their famous propensity to chat, naturally drawn to and skilled in this new form of communication?

This is my second post arising from my experiences at Blog School, a regular workshop run by PublicityShip in Perth, to help new bloggers develop their skills.

The lesson that prompted these mental meanderings was focussed on the sub-culture of blog comments:

• When to comment,
• Why to comment and
• How to comment.

The result?

My musings on the gender dynamics in the wonderful world of blogging!

He Said, She Said

It is inevitable in any mixed-gender gathering that men and women will at some stage split down the middle like kids at a prom.

If it is a social event like a BBQ, then the distillation of the gathering into gender groups is understandable. We don’t need smoke and sausage fat in our hair and the blokes would buy a police scanner if they wanted a blow-by-blow account of the neighbourhood’s dramas.

But what if the gathering is in the relatively genderless world of blogging?

Do bloggers and their readers still form sub-groups along gender lines?

Are men drawn more to the musings of other men? Do women comment only on their sister’s sites?

At first glance, it seems to me that just as many men are interested in personal development as there are women interested in marketing or gadgetry.

And when it comes to getting comments from male and female readers, some of my favourite, regular visitors are men, even though my site’s content is largely focussed on the interests of women.

So has the virtual world of blogging tossed off the shackles of the real world’s stereotypes? Are we all grooving together in the middle of the dancefloor, irrespective of who is meant to lead or who is wearing the corsage?

The Clever Art of Commenting

But back to the topic of blog commentary.

I’ve been told that we are supposed to treat other people’s blogs like their homes…

So does this mean the women are checking out the window-dressing while the guys drool over the technical gadgets?

When commenting, do the women engage in polite and careful conversation, dropping hints for improvement like tea-cake crumbs?

And do the men take a quick, sweeping look at what’s on offer and butt in with their viewpoint, often sending the topic on a sharp tangent?

There may be the occasional visitor who exhibits gender-specific behaviour when doing the rounds of the neighbourhood blogs, but in my experience commenting on other people’s work tends to strip us all back to basics.

Choosing you words carefully - to both articulate a point and to create a lasting impression - is the daily challenge of blog commentators of both sexes.

Walk the Talk

The reality is that communication is mostly about body language.

All those carefully rehearsed speeches and interesting bits of small talk that we cultivate are merely the backdrop to the real performance. What really counts are all the subtle signals our bodies are communicating to each other.

When a woman wants to make a statement, she is as likely to choreograph her appearance and gestures as she is organise her thoughts and words into a sensible arrangement.

And let’s face it, the hair flip, open stance, smiling eyes and nodding head are the signals every nervous man - whether at a podium or a wine-bar - is looking for.

But in the world of commenting, this powerful arsenal of signals is reduced to a little yellow smiley face.

Without body language our communication goes back to basics - the words we choose.

Comments in Moderation

So what does the future hold for the “Leave a Reply” box?

We all know that we have totally abused the emailing system, to the point that businesses are actually paying money to have their employees attend Email Etiquette classes.

So are Blog Comments destined to follow the same path, reduced to brutal or obnoxious statements that you would never dream of saying to the person’s face?

I think this is unlikely.

At Blog School we ran through ChrisG’s post “Ten Reasons Commenting is Good for Bloggers” and the points he raises are at the heart of why blog commentary will remain an effective form of communication.

When you examine the reasons why we should feel encouraged to comment, you see that they generally fall into two camps:

1. Why We Give
2. What We Get

You Get What You Give

If I was determined to twist this point back to the title of this piece, I might draw a correlation to the gender-based roles of giving and getting, but Chris G’s honest and eloquent article negates such stereotyping.

As he shares his beliefs about the benefits of blog commentary it becomes clear that blogging is really about community.

By Doing the Right Thing and Making Friends and Influencing People, you ultimately Get More of What You Give.

A fresh perspective, return clicks and the development of a blogger’s eye are all the good stuff you get in return for sharing a little love with your fellow bloggers.

And you don’t get much more touchy-feely - or strategic-minded - than that!

My last comment..?

Can you comment - please???

I’ll even settle for a girlie giggle or a masculine tangent…

Where’s the love?

I’ve recently started attending what I call Blog School, a regular workshop run by PublicityShip in Perth, to help new bloggers develop their skills.

Yesterday the focus was on improving our blogs by engaging in writing every day.

It was a challenging hour to put it mildly.

While I love to write, the assignment was less about constructing a piece of inspiring prose and more about lubricating the connection between our head and our hand.

The task was to write non-stop for five minute intervals about anything.

Anything!

There was no topic and according to the lovely Julia who ran the session, grammar, punctuation and even the simple art of making sense were to be abandoned.

While I looked at her in disbelief (my brain frantically searching for a topic - any topic!) a frightening vision rose before my eyes….

The stream-of-consciousness technique!

It immediately took me back to reading James Joyce’s Ulysses at university - the last time words had messed with my head and an experience I had happily blocked out…

The Struggle to Not Make Sense

As a technical writer and former English teacher the task was initially torturous.

While the rest of the group quickly got underway, filling pages of their pads (nothing pops a sweat like the sound of other people’s turning pages!) I was almost immediately struck by hand-cramp.

This is a new illness for me. Writer’s block I’m familiar with and I’ve developed lovely little techniques to bop it on the head. But the unexpected and totally uncontrolled spasm that causes you to grip and release your pen as if you are wielding a hand pump was totally alien.

Julia fed us phrases to stimulate the process:

• I remember …
• I know…
• I don’t know…
• I am…
• I want…
• I don’t want…
• I feel…

My head grabbed each phrase like a life preserver and my hand gouged them into the paper.

Why wasn’t it working? What was wrong? (Everything! Everything, my head screamed. The grammar, the syntax, the total lack of a theme!)

I laboured on, trampling and hacking through the English language, but then something changed…

Confronting Myself

I don’t think I passed into another dimension - and I certainly didn’t suddenly find myself strolling the streets of Dublin in the early 1900s - but all that use and abuse of the word “I” seemed to push a button.

The words began to trip across the paper and I suddenly couldn’t stop writing about me!

All the scaffolding of the writing process - the careful structuring, the weaving of syntax, the use of parody and allusion - toppled over and I just looped and skipped through a kaleidoscope of personal images and impressions.

One moment I was writing about my grand-parents, the next I was comparing myself to a badly-tilting fence…

As I read back over my ramblings in the break (while massaging my aching hand) I realised that while a lot of it was white noise, there were glimmerings of personal insight.

I actually found myself wanting to read more about me!

Dot Dot Dot…

Luckily we weren’t required to share our efforts with the group and I’ll not bore you with my strangled prose here. After all, creating meaning was not the purpose of the exercise!

What I did take away with me from the session - other than a notebook bulging with scribble - were the following lessons:

1. Writing doesn’t always have to be manufactured
2. People enjoy reading personal information
3. Being overly critical of yourself brings on a bad case of hand cramp
4. Disconnecting from writing rules produces copious amounts of writing
5. There is a lot of power in the use of the word “I”

So where to from here?

While I’m hardly a convert to stream-of-consciousness, I’m going to practice lubricating the connection between my hand and my brain and indulge myself in more meanderings about me.

You’ve been warned!