Writing

It’s been a lot of fun, writing here for the Nation family of sites .

(Tosses aside flagrant attempt to get page views with a sentence oddly suggestive of quitting.)

It has been a lot of fun. I get to spout off about the Oilers and hockey with minimal editorial control, rub shoulders with bona fide mainstream media guys – one of which I’ve respected ever since I started reading his work as a teenager – and engage with Oilers fans from all around the world. How often would a fan like me get a chance to ask a guy like Jason Gregor a question, and see Gregor bring that question to a player or coach? Not often.

I open with this to make it clear I’m not complaining – this experience has been a blast, and I wouldn’t trade it.

That said, I’m curious what people think the motivation of a writer here is. Getting beyond the obvious – the things I just pointed to, and the bag of tarnished gold coins a disreputable man drops off at my home once a month – there’s a much bigger factor that keeps me popping out articles: I like to write about things I like to write about. If I didn’t get to grab whatever topic popped into my head and run as far and fast with it as I wanted to, none of those other things would matter; it’s too much work to write if you don’t genuinely enjoy it.

That’s why I’m always amused by comments like the one Ducey made to Robin Brownlee yesterday:

Ducey went on to discuss Khabibulin, but it’s the first few lines I wanted to key in on. The suggestion there is that because Oilers Nation is primarily about hockey, the readers have the right to demand that Brownlee not discuss a related issue (how it plays in the media) and instead limit himself to the actual hockey being played.

The truth is that neither Ducey, nor any of the other readers here, have the right to dictate content. It’s something that seems to happen a fair bit, when Person X’s pet peeve isn’t getting the play he feels it deserves, or something he likes is (in his view) getting an unfairly rough go of it.

The main reason for that is that it wouldn’t work – people write about what they’re passionate about, what they’re interested in, what they feel they can do justice to (at least on blogs; I’m sure the MSM guys have written a thing or two that bored them for their more high-paying gigs). If anyone started having the power to dictate what I wrote, I’d pack my bags and wander someplace else. The primary motivation, the thing that got me started blogging, was the joy I took in it, and as long as writing is a sideline to a demanding full-time job, the fun of it is what keeps me going.

So by all means, keep tossing out suggestions (as many of you have) and keep critiquing the work itself. That’s part of the fun.

Just don’t expect to be able to dictate what other people write. If you feel strongly that something needs to be said, or need that kind of control, do what I did: go do it yourself.