Melanie Morton

In recent weeks the worrisome issue of blog etiquette and whether I should be replying to readers' comments, or not, has been increasingly bothering me.  And so with the mounting realization that I need to make a decision on what to do, it seemed to make sense to raise this concern within my blog, where I can I ponder my thoughts on the matter, hopefully arriving at a conclusion.  Then perhaps I will feel able to release the worry: to let it go.

When I first began to blog it didn’t occur to me that any potential readers’ might leave a response to my work.  I mean I’d read other blogs and had been aware of replies from readers’.  Particularly on the daily newspaper websites where below each article is a flurry of responses to the journalists work. 

But I never imagined someone; anyone would do the same for me.

The first few comments left me giddy with delight: that not only were people reading my work, they were also taking valuable time from their lives to respond to me.

Of course, being me, once the giddiness abated, panic set in.

I didn’t know what to do. 

Was I supposed to reply, or not?

Would the commenter expect a response from me: an acknowledgement of their comment.  Or had they already moved on, forgetting about my blog, my thoughts and that they’d even left a reply?

And if I were to respond, what would I say?

More disconcerting to me was the growing fear that this lack of reply could be seen in the same league as failing to write a thank you note for a much loved and appreciated gift received?

Of course now that I’d escalated the situation, with each new comment left on my blog, the niggling worries increased.

An easy enough problem to sort out though, surely.  All I needed to do was tap out a few words of thanks, or my thoughts on their thoughts.

Yes, about as easy as attempting to write a meaningful, heartfelt message in a birthday card to a loved one.  Or even worse, that horror of horrors in a work scenario: ‘The Birthday Card’ worming its way around the office for the entire department to sign arrives on your desk with all the usual banal messages taken, and the only vacant spot for you to create your ‘needs to be fabulous and funny’ greeting surrounded by the funniest messages in the card. 

Great.  And so you tentatively scrawl, your handwriting suddenly becoming oversized and illegible, smudging the ink in your hurry to shove the card in the envelope before anyone else can read your scribbling of the worst birthday greeting imaginable.

Anyway, eventually I began to devise replies to comments, writing and re-writing them in the word processor lodged in my thoughts.  Then I critiqued them.  Not a good idea.  Then I re-wrote them. 

Asking: was that a good enough response?  Did it say all that I meant it to say?

Replying to comments for me, I discovered, is a lot more complicated than I could have predicted.  And in a way feels similar to the split personality of an actor or any kind of performer who professionally has the confidence and ability to stand upon a stage or act in front of the camera in role as ‘another’ character.  But ask them to talk about, or walk on stage as themselves, and they are simply unable to do it.

Revealing ourselves, our true identity, is a lot harder than representing ourselves either through our ‘writer’s voice’, playing an instrument in front of an audience, or acting out someone else’s life. 

When we are no longer the ‘character’ but forced to become ourselves, when we reply to comments as us rather than from the writerly perspective we feel unprotected and vulnerable.  In becoming someone else: in our words being guided through a writer’s perspective we receive that welcome and often necessary sense of protection.

That’s not to say when I write my blog that it’s not ‘me’ and that it’s not my truth.  It is.  It is the real me.  Only it is the ‘me’ filtered through the careful and selective process of writing word by word, creating sentence by sentence, of knowing what I want to say and attempting to say it in a readable and digestible fashion. 

If you and I were to sit and chat, you’d soon see that the conversational ‘me’ burbles, that I often fidget nervously when expressing my opinion, and that my attention span is such that I can flit from topic to topic, leaving your head spinning.

When I write my blog it is with the hope that it will be read, but I don’t and can’t think about that as I write.  For it is a process that needs a sense of separation from the end result, of being read.

So here’s my difficulty.  If I were to respond to readers’ comments it would, for me, shatter the sense of illusion that as a writer I have written within.  My comments in reply to others, in essence, would be the equivalent of an actor stopping to chat to the audience, receiving praise or criticism of their performance in the interval at the end of Act One; nerve racking stuff.

Now, you may find my comparison overly dramatic (I am a writer!) and perhaps I’m way of base and the truth is that those who have in the past left comments never in fact had any expectation of me replying.

In which case, all well and good, and please just ignore me.

However, as I’ve come this far, I’ll conclude:

Without question I welcome, encourage and above all value readers’ comments upon my blog.  In writing a blog it is with the intention and desire of creating a reaction, of perhaps nudging a thought process along, and of communicating with others through the beauty and power of language.  Therefore a reader's comment, good or bad, is an acknowledgement of readership and proof that my writing has at least provoked a response. 

On those rare occasions when I’ve left comments on other writers’ blog’s, (a good blog or article generally encourages me to go away and think about the subject matter rather than comment) it has been without any expectation or need for the writer to reply to me.  I have had something to say, I’ve said it and that’s that.  In fact, I rarely return to see if the writer has replied to my comment.

So my conclusion is this, for the time being, and until I feel differently: my decision is to continue not commenting on readers’ thoughts upon my website.  If this is bad blog etiquette then I sincerely apologize.  For those who may have left comments in the past and felt disappointed or let down that I failed to enter into a dialogue with you as so many other writers’ do, then I’m sorry.  For those of you who are happy to leave me comments, to express your thoughts then I welcome and will, I assure you, enjoy reading them, and thank you for doing so, because it means a lot. 

For the those stragglers who’ve just arrived to read something entertaining or interesting, or those who have searched for another Mel Morton and found me, and who are thinking I’m flapping about nothing on this blog etiquette business, you’re probably right. 

So, anyway, now I’ve that said my piece, and hopefully with the worry resolved I can release it from my thoughts and get back to work, to writing.