Literary Blogging - Do you need to be abnormal?

In an effort to expand the horizons of its bloggers, blogspot has taken the sensible decision to highlight sites on a daily basis. The examples they choose fall into a small number of categories including, as a high percentage, literary blogs - sites where the emphasis is on writing rather than content specifics. There's a saying of sorts, more of a feel in fact, that a writer - a good writer - needn't have content; style is enough.

It's for this reason that writers' diaries do so well. Sure you'll get the odd snippet as the writer interacts with other famous bods to create literary gossip (in fact it's these snippets amplified to a whole book that create what are now known as celebrity biographies), but usually a good writer will get away with a diary for diary's sake and still produce a worthwhile prose collection.

But for what ever reason, literary blogs are different. They still act as a diary and they'll certainly include the odd snippet - even if that snippet is based on local knowledge or close friends - but for the large majority of example, a piece of writing requires an excuse, a positive suggestion of content for the entry to be worthwhile. And when that content is not present in the real world, the only fall back is the character, predeliction, experience, taste or otherwise of the blogger.

Here's some examples from drawn from Blogspot's more recent selection.

"Sometimes I feel invisible. Or two-dimensional. Like a crudely drawn character on a flickpad, with a life consisting of involuntary movements, without a voice of my own to cry out with. I find myself flailing like a sailor in these moments, my soul gasping for air as it tries to escape the confines of this flesh and blood prison, leaving me feeling something less than solid."
Mysterg - Meditations in an Emergency

"I have been spreading myself thin lately. I don't mean this is a sexual way."
Hannah Miet - My Soul is a Butterfly

"There are a lot of words people overuse or get wrong. They sit on lips like tumours and hover on pages like the person at the house party that nobody invited. “Literally” is one, “unique” is another. A third is “life-changing”. Life is full of changes, that’s a cliché, but very little can truly change your life. There are such a small number of events so significant that they deserve, that they have earned, that adjective."
Mr London Street - Mr London Street

So if content is limited to personality, is it then necessary to be in some way abnormal in order to be a literary blogger. Has Mr London Street had such a complex set of relationships that his blog justifies the inclusion of so many personal entries? Does Hannah Miet have such an unusual sex life - or is it merely the desire for one that keeps her motivated?

The Leat has content of course, and it's almost always activity based. Since it's been snowing over Dartmoor today and the South West of Britian is, ordinarily, snow-starved, activities will soon get under way.