Kitty Kilian, At times she felt like she was living someone else’s life, mixed media on paper
10 x 15 cm / 4 x 6 in
Women who blog
What is it with women who blog?
So many women have blogs, yet so few of them WRITE.
Most seem happy to post embroidery, freshly baked apple pies and family pictures.
Nothing wrong with apple pies. But where is the distinct female voice in them?
Men who blog
Most top probloggers (professional bloggers) seem to be men.
I may be exaggerating. I may be reading the wrong type of blogs.
I tried to gather some quick statistics but I got entangled in obnoxiously long Alexa and Technorati lists with numerous subcategories I did not know how to choose from.
So if you don’t mind I will speak from personal experience. As you know, of late I have been reading up on art marketing and online marketing in general. I also like to read about copywriting.
In modern day businesspeak Online marketing = Content = Copywriting.
But I read about copywriting for fun. I love people who can write well. Or may be I love good writing. Or both. Either way – I have been taking stock. All of the blogs I ‘ve been following over the summer were written by men.
- Cory Huff of The Abundant Artist (which just this week was renamed into Artempowers.me) is a man.
- Sterling and Jay of the Internet Business Mastery Academy are men.
- Seth Godin is a man (I am still not sure if I should keep following him).
- Darren Rowse from Problogger is a man. (And if you ask me, the man just writes too damn much.)
- Brian Clark, Robert Bruce and Jonathan Morrow from Copyblogger are men. Although they did a smart thing when they hired Sonia Simone.
And so I could go on.
A legally blind, headbanger female copywriter
I have to admit I had hardly noticed this male dominance myself, until I found a guest post on Cory Huffs blog about art marketing. (A guest post is a post written by someone else than the regular blogger.)
This one was by Steff Metal. A woman. She is a young copywriter from new Zealand who has three blogs and writes for more, her personal one being about her own heavy metal lifestyle. She has an eye condition that makes her legally blind. But she can see enough to write. Go check out her pictures, by the way, they’re hilarious; she’s a metal chick for real. And anyway, apart from branding herself superbly, she can write like hell.
If you don’t sell your artwork, you won’t eat. And you’ll probably find out that not eating kinda sucks. Personally, I’m a big fan of eating. That’s why I stopped fooling around with words and started asking people to pay me for writing.
When I read her guest post about How To Write Sales Letters I just got that thing I always get when I read something really good. I fall in love.
Other people, I hear, experience such feelings when they come across music, ballet, good cooking, a breath taking mountain view or bold graffiti. And yes, I do know of such feelings too. But I will get them most deeply and readily when I read good writing.
There is something so awesome about being inspired and amused by someone else’s thoughts.
Between heaven and earth
As a staunch atheist and believer in nothing anyway, that is the only riddle I will rack my brain over: how it is that mere words can influence your mood, and hence your physical health and hence your life?
Between the immaterial and the material there is a miraculous connection. From thoughts to molecules.
Somewhere between heaven and earth.
Women who write well
I realized when I read Steff that I love to read women who write well.
Shortly after that Cory mentioned Melissa Dinwiddie. A creativity coach and a friend of his. I looked up her website and laughed. She is witty. She uses wit to make her marketing more palatable. She had this really funny joke in her pop-up too. I emailed her and asked if I could steal that joke until I would come up with a better one. Be my guest, she said: I stole it from someone else, too.
Honesty, another thing I love.
Women who write well – with wit
And so I narrowed down my preferences. I like women who write well and with wit.
Then last week I came across the blog of an Australian business coach.
(You may think I am online all day, and you may be right.)
Her name is Ming-Zhu Hii. She is a former actor who describes herself as an ‘artist, speaker, trainer and passionate serial entrepreneur‘. With her actor husband she coaches business people to go about their business creatively. She writes a hilarious blog, so I put her on my new list immediately.
I was struck however by her language (in the following excerpt she is talking about a book she wants to write):
Which brings us to the inevitable question, IS it going to be any good?
Fuck, I hope so. No – strike that… Yes. It’s going to be amazing. The first draft will probably be pure shite, though, and I will feel like the crappest writer ever minted by a word-processor, and want to give up, but something or someone somewhere will tell me not to be a dumb-ass quitter (even if it’s just me), and I will get back on my editing steed and ride that motherfucker until a slightly-better draft 2 has emerged. You know the deal.
I mean, mom, help! It’s right there, for real: she says fuck.
She says a lot of other things too that most of my American friends would not approve of. And the more blog posts I read, the more it amused me.
I started to follow her on Twitter – one of the most awesome social inventions of the century, although not everyone seems to have grasped that yet. Twitter allows you to take a peek into someone else’s life. So you can step in if you feel like it without having to interact all the time. Truly amazing. A few days ago she sent a tweet into the world about another Australian blogger, Catherine Caine. She writes about marketing.
Having a few minutes to spare while my paint was drying (honest!) I looked her up.
She writes ‘fuck’ just like that, too. And she, too, is a great writer:
What I Believe
Important does not mean painful.
You should be paid most for the things that feel easy.
Money is a useful metric, but a shitty goal.
Women who blog and say fuck
I sent Ming-Zhu a tweet.
And from one tweet came the other:
And before you think we international penpals had better get some serious work done, let me tell you all of this made me THINK as well. Not about writing fuck or shite. It is true, those words can only be used in English. But about why I was so amused.
How to lead your own life
Remember this little digital collage I made a few months ago?
Kitty Kilian, Things they never tell you about the past
It is somewhat related to the matter at hand.
I don’t think I ever made this gesture in real life. I was not brought up that way. But to make a drawing of it amused me greatly. And it meant a whole range of things to me. Liberation foremost.
These do-you-write-fuck-tweets got me thinking about why I admire women who just go ahead and do as they please. Which is what I am trying to do with my work and my blog and my life – but it takes more courage than you would think.
It took me four years to become truly proud of my work – and so, in contemporary Dutch coaching slang, to become ‘it’s owner’. It took me five to put the first Paypal button on my website. That was a month ago. So I am not making progress at great speed! Yet I am forging ahead.
The mini-conversation on Twitter made me realise it is time to forget about all the business blogs I have been reading and podcasts I have been listening to and to just start doing my own thing. I have no idea what that thing will look like yet. But I do realize that since I have started to write about my own art life honestly, last summer, I am enjoying writing about it much more.
So for now I think that is what I’ll keep doing.
* If you have any better ideas, let me know!
By the way, I made this yesterday, and it is what I had meant to write about, but didn’t
(although I did too, in a roundabout way, as such things go):
Tags: art, artist, blogging, collage, feminine uncertainty, women bloggers
What a great post Kitty, or should I say a fucking great post! Its an interesting thing swearing, my dad just joined twitter and my first thought was but what about if I want to say fuck or something, how am I going to do that now, but perhaps at 42 I shouldn’t be so worried about my parents approval. As always your posts offer a lot to think about.
Thanks Claire – maybe just give it a try, your dad might surprise you!
Add me to the girl-crushers list, Kitty! You so totally rock! Fucking awesome. :)
And congrats on getting those PayPal buttons up, btw!
Onward, ho!
Ha! Wij vrouwen zijn zo fucking braaaaf. Boos kijken op foto’s: ja! Heb poster naast mijn computer hangen: ‘Frau muss skeptisch bleiben’, met drie fucking taartachtig geklede meisjes die (o zo onverwachts) met een kritische blik de wereld in kijken. ‘Meisjes’, ook al een kutwoord. Er moet nog veel veranderd worden aan de taal om een ander gendergevoel te krijgen. Let’s do it.
Ha Liesbeth, het kost mij veel moeite om foto’s te vinden met mensen met een niet zo zoete of lege expressie. Boos kijken op oude foto’s? Zelden.
Sounds like I need to have a look at these bloggers… refreshing, inspiring and witty – my preferences too!
Oh love it! The writing, the opinions, the art is just wonderful on this post, Kitty! And I must be doing something right. This morning on the drive to school, I hear my six year old say “Crap! Another stupid driver in front of you, mom!”
Hi Kitty – this was so fucking beautiful – thank you!
Knew you two would hit it off! :)
Now this is some aaawesome post! Ja, dat was me ook al opgevallen, dat die damn goeie bloggers vaak mannen zijn. Darren Rowse, Brian Clarke, you name it. En het zijn ook nog eens meestal Amerikanen. Ik vind Sonia Simone ook supergoed, schrijft ook vaak voor Copyblogger. Er moeten er toch meer zijn, uhm, *denkthard*. Als ik ze weet laat ik ze weten. Die Melissa is wel een ontdekking trouwens.
En oja, ik herken dat gevoel bij goedgeschreven teksten. Daarom breng ik ook veel te veel tijd online door denk ik, al die geweldige blogs lezen.
Fuck yeah! honesty — with or without the swearing — is my favourite type of blogging :)
(By the way, your pop-up just scared the hell out of me! ) Ik ben een van die vrouwen die hun borduursels laten zien. De appeltaart eet ik gewoon op. Voor mij is mijn blog letterlijk een logboek. Om terug te kijken en om erkenning van gelijkgestemden te krijgen. Bijna alles wat ik maak, geef ik weg. Door het op mijn blog te zetten, blijft het ook voor mijzelf een beetje bewaard. Ik heb geen behoefte om daarbij mijn ‘female voice’ te laten horen. Wat ik denk, voel en vind, heeft, in mijn geval, vrij weinig te maken met wat ik maak. Mannen en vrouwen, het maakt mij niet zoveel uit, wie iets schrijft, wel wat ze te zeggen hebben!
Is ook goed, Petra! Ik had het over professionele bloggers, vooral. Is inderdaad leuk dat een weblog ook een dagboekfunctie kan hebben. Er wordt weer veel meer geschreven tegenwoordig volgens mij, door al die blogs.
Love this.
I think though that women can get away with saying fuck and even talking about sex in a blog post far easier than a middle-aged man can. Middle-aged men trying to be hip and edgy just sound like prats.
In the meantime, have a look at http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org. Lots of sassiness and lots of fuck words.
Mike Garner recently posted..How Jean-Paul Sartre and French existentialism changed my life
Thanks for pointing me towards that site! Lovely.
Kitty Kilian recently posted..Joy, Seduction, To Hell: all together