Who owns a blog?

Who owns a blog? You might think this a funny question, but recently, I have come to observe that the READERS think they own a blog. I shall explain.

Not infrequently, I receive comments from readers, either approving of certain kinds of articles, and requesting more of them, or disapproving of certain kinds of articles and requesting fewer of them. Sometimes, however, I detect a proprietorial tone in the comments that seems to be saying: "I am the reader, it is MY blog experience and so it MUST be this way." I find this attitude both odd, and intriguing.

In my experience, bloggers don't make any money from blogging. They write because they have something they wish to say. In this sense, the blog is the ultimate writer's medium - in that it is written purely out of the free will of the writer, usually for no other purpose than expressing his or her thoughts. It is not a monetary situation, as other writing situations are. No matter how well I write, I will not make any money out of it. No one is going to pay me for a particularly thoughtful or insightful blog post. Indeed, the only thing that keeps blog writers writing is the fact that most of them love to write...otherwise, why bother?

The readers who make demands upon me, to write in particular ways, do not seem to understand my position as a blogger. There is no compensation for me, to write, at all. There most probably never will be. I could blog for the rest of my life (which I may do) and I will make nothing at all out of it, in monetary terms. I will, however, have done one thing: I will have expressed my views on things that matter to me. I will have inscribed a portrait of my self, in some indirect way, in how I write and in what I choose to write. I will, therefore, have expressed myself, day by day, year by year. That is all it will do. There will never be a tangible financial reward for having done so.

Readers who think they own the blog are thinking only of themselves - of what they want and of their needs. This is, I suppose, an easy trap to fall into. Nothing, I suppose, could be easier, for some people, than thinking only of themselves. However, they should realize that the blogger is someone else, whom they will never meet and who DOES NOT KNOW THEIR CONCERNS. The blogger does not write to please a particular individual for then they become a writer for hire, as it were, even if no payment is made. A blogger writes because there is something of interest to them in that moment: it is an expression of the thoughts of the present. Therefore, to demand of the blogger that they write in a particular way and of particular subject matter, is to demand that the blogger change, that the blogger should become someone else. In fact, it is a demand that the blogger cease to be a blogger and become a writer for hire.

If a blogger is true to themselves, they will, over time, cover all subjects and areas that are natural to them. There will, in that spectrum of articles, be material that pleases many people. However, no blogger should be required to focus on a particular type of article, from that repertoire, since that would be to distort the truth of themselves, it would be to slant it, in an unbalanced fashion, in a particular direction.

If a reader likes one article type that the blogger writes, then the reader should be patient enough to let the blogger write such articles, as and when they are moved to do so and read their other article types, in between, as background that allows a better understanding of the blogger/writer. The reader should not demand of the blogger to cease writing particular types of articles to focus on the type that they like, because that introduces inauthenticity into the blogger's work. The blogger will no longer be true to the moment and to themselves if they blog on demand, in this way.

I will write what I wish to write, when I wish to write it. That is, in fact, the attraction of blogging. There is no editor with a decision over whether or not any particular thought may be published, there is no publisher to say "The market isn't big enough for that!", there is only the thought and the wish to communicate it - along with the unparalleled ability to do so, at the press of a key.

I do take note of the readers comments over what they do and do not like. However, I also note the proprietorial attitude of some of them - and this concerns me. The reader does not own the blog - just as the reader does not write the blog. To expect the blogger to write on demand is to completely destroy the meaning of what it is to blog. So, I am not going down that path. I will write what it occurs to me to write on any particular day.

At the same time, I am happy to have readers and enjoy my correspondence with them. Yet, the day I allow myself to be dictated to, by the more vocal readers and have my work determined by them, is the day that I should really cease to write. I won't do that. I will write what I wish to, when I wish to...and hope that some people, at least, appreciate it enough to read it.

Thank you.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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