A Very Supportive Family? A Tilly Debate

I have a very supportive family so they tell me. Though sometimes I do wonder if this is true! So here I sit alone (at last) in the office and well………..ponder on this for a while and then I start to think…….

You see, I got up Saturday morning cold, yet chirpy, ready to write the next episode of Fluffy Slippers and Pom Poms and was almost done, when I was asked how my blog was going by my daughter. I knew that I had to stop writing; as the family in dribs and drabs were coming to see what was for breakfast. So I took time out and went to my blog page to have a look; this turned out to be a big mistake.

Well we went on the “Stats”. Like any Blogger I look at them all the time and find them fascinating, though I must confess I’m not sure how to read them properly. We were huddled around the lap top when up popped my page reviews (this is my favourite as I like to see what people like to read). My daughter was impressed until my husband pointed out eight page reviews was not eight people but just the number of pages one possible person had looked at (well this could be true but it’s the way he said looked at and not read, that I was upset about). ‘Oh’ my deflated daughter exhaled her disappointment. Well I said at least I have people coming back to read more. ‘Oh’ he said how do you know that then?’ I showed him the audience which shows you on a world map where people have visited from. Well every couple of days I have a Russian visitor who looks at different pages ‘Wow’ they all exclaimed and me and like a puffed up peacock I sat there very proud.

My husband leaned in to get a better look at the figures. Now Russia on my map covers a large area, it is all green, which looks very impressive. My ever loving husband (Oh, he can be so hurtful with his truthful analysis of any given understanding he has of a situation) stood up and pondered and then reasoned, well it only takes one look at your blog (notice he uses look not reads) to make the whole of Russia go green!’ I had never thought about it in these terms before ‘yep’. I reluctantly replied with a little resentfulness creeping in, I guessed it did. But look I said defensively, they did come back three times this week. At this very moment my oldest son walked in and took a look and then he offered his knowledge. Well he said “You know they have robots that look for specific words so they can attach an advert of relevance on the side of your blog? See look the last piece was your Balloon Poem and the ad’s are all for hot air balloon trips.’

They all looked around at me with their “bless her” faces on. ‘Anyhow’ Continued my husbands still reasoning, while he put a supportive arm around my shoulders ‘You can’t expect people from all over the world to want to read your work, you just keep writing because you enjoy it.’ He patted my arm and kissed the top of my head. We all laughed, me most of all, thanking them for their support and belief in my work.

So my debate within myself is: - why do writers write? Why do I write? And who do I think reads my work and does it matter if any of my work gets read.

Writers write for as many reasons as there are writers and readers. I write because I have to and yes it does matter that my work gets read. I make no assumptions about why you choose to read my work. And if I only get read by a scanning robot then my work is only good enough for that and I hope the robot smiled, is all I can say! But I  hope, against hope, that anyone of any country, who has stumbled on my pages and have taken the time to read my scribblings, that I made them ponder a while, gave them a chuckle or two and they ended with a  smile.

So do I have a supportive Family?

Well I think so. You see they see things from a different angle than me and make me question myself, perhaps I will never agree with them completely but that surely is what debate is all about a pool of thought to look at and ponder on but you don’t always have to jump in do you?