Welcome!

I believe it's traditional for a first blog post to list the reasons why the author has started blogging.

I've been thinking about what to say over the past couple of days. It's not easy to gather up the mish-mash of different impulses and sculpt them into something that looks sensible and focused. But I shall attempt to do so.

Frankly, the reason I first considered blogging was the general view that seems to prevail on the web that writers who wish to be published should have a blog. They should also, apparently, have a big bunch of journalist and PR friends, and a website with a readership numbered in the hundreds of thousands. I don't have any of these things, but hey you gotta start somewhere.

The question on my mind was, if I started a blog what on earth would I blog about? Instinct told me that the cute sayings of my one-year-old son wouldn't cut it. (This morning, by the way, he made the great mental leap that allows him to distinguish between 'egg' and 'leg'.) Likewise, my opinions on Ireland's economy, trenchant though they may be, don't seem like the best material for impressing agents and publishers with my writerly abilities.

Gradually I began to realise that as a writer with a blog, what I would blog about would be writing. This seems dangerously self-indulgent. Just, like, tell people all the nonsense that's churning around in my mind all day? Just, like, expect them to listen?

Do you remember when you signed up for a pen-friend in primary school? Guidelines would be issued as to what to write in your letter. Guideline number one was not to start every sentence with 'I'. They didn't say what you should use instead, but I was an obedient child. Religiously in each letter I would refrain from saying 'I' at the beginning of each sentence. If I wished to tell my correspondent that I'd been to the beach, I would say “My sister and I went to the beach.” Describing my new shoes, I'd say “Some new shoes were bought for me.” Perhaps I was missing the point, but I took it all terribly seriously.

And now the suggestion has been made that it's my duty to write something that's all about me! Me and my inner life! Start every single sentence with 'I' if I like! Bore people rigid with detailed information on my every writer-like thought! And don't do all this in a secret diary to be published after my tragic but noble early death - instead put it out there on the internet in the hope that someone, somewhere, will be fascinated!

What's not to like? Welcome to 'The Egotistical Writer'. If you want to read a blog redolent with modesty, reticence and a desire to avoid boring the reader, go somewhere else. Or, as my one-year-old would say, “'way!”