I’ve started writing Dublin theatre reviews, just for the heck of it, on my blog. As a former actor, it’s been an enjoyable way of reconnecting with the Irish theatre scene, which gave me some of the happiest years of my life in my 20s.
Though critics are never the most popular species of human, they are a necessary evil, and of course one good review – or at least an honest attempt at understanding a production – can obliterate the sting of others that were mean-spirited or simply didn’t get the point, and is marketing gold. Sometimes, however, a well-written review, explaining why a play doesn’t succeed, is often a relief to the actors, because rehearsal is such a hermetically sealed intense process that, if there have been frustrations along the way with the script or the direction, which often happens, it helps if the difficulty is seen and named.
Acting may be a form of collaborative creative madness, but sometimes when rehearsing a bad play, one can feel like one is going crazy. I hope I write the sort of reviews that demonstrate an understanding of that process, and which I would have liked to read myself, after opening night.
Talking to a journalist friend of mine about my latest wheeze, I found myself explaining why I should write for free, as it didn’t make sense to her. On the face of it, she has a point. It’s undervaluing myself as a writer, it’s not “proper” journalism, I “should” be making proper pitches to magazines and newspapers citing lots of relevant experience and talents, and applying for a “proper” job. But then if I were paid, I’d have to do what I was told, whenever I was told to do it. And that’s never been my forté.
Although blogging is, in the main, vanity publishing, opining at will, ad nauseam, to a regular handful of people who are usually not your friends (because your friends have better things to do than waste time in front of a computer reading), and they tend to be of the subspecies geek from the planet Nerd, if you have a niche interest, it is a highly efficient way to get your ideas and opinions across on the internet, to those who share that interest.
Search engines love blog posts, and tend to prioritize them in answers to queries, because they tend to be recent, relevant and written in the first person, which are the sort of answers we look for on the internet. Despite the copious amounts of information on the web, unless we are using it for commerce or seeking definitive facts or specific technical information, first-person narratives carry weight, and if you’re writing in the arts or related fields, blogging is a very effective way to communicate the story behind your creative process.
At a recent seminar on blogging and the arts, business consultant and award-winning blogger Annette Clancy illustrated the benefits for artists of all persuasions of blogging. She gave examples of singer/songwriters who had put all their work online and had built up such a following that, when it came to selling CDs and other merchandise, people were only too willing to fork out for the privilege. One theatre company’s blog gave blogging space each week to individuals in the company, from stage managers to lighting designers to actors, which brilliantly communicated the sense of team spirit and the ethos of the company, to a degree that would be hard to replicate in another medium.
When it comes to the written word, poets and writers may find it illogical to self-publish in a blog. Given that poetry journals, for example, rarely publish work that has already been published online, it may seem folly to go the blogging route. But this seems to me to be old-fashioned, and doesn’t take into account the changing nature of publishing.
The old model works from the top down – an established publishing house with a hard-earned reputation, be it academic journal, newspaper, magazine, music or book publisher, commissions talented writers and seeks paying readers/listeners. As a fairly recent compromise, such publishers now offer online access to their publications, but on a subscription-only basis, or by selling e-books. Increasingly, this model is hard to sustain, because as more and more people use search engines as their starting point, such “closed” information tends to be ignored, and freely available material takes precedence.
The wealth of written material in The Irish Times, for example, with arguably some of the best writing and commentary in Ireland, hardly ever features in search engine results. (Sadly, this is also true of hotpress.) One has to be loyal enough to the newspaper or magazine to subscribe to it online, and then visit the webpage regularly to read what’s there.
In the new, democratic (some might say anarchic) era of online publishing, established titles do not guarantee readership. A well-written blog can, nowadays, gain more readers online, and with RSS technology, (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) such readers can easily keep tabs on what you write. Although poets may exclude themselves from established journals if they put their work on a blog, they won’t necessarily be doing themselves out of a publishing deal. Indeed, having proved that you are able to get an enthusiastic readership, it can only work in your favour. If you are unknown, blogging has got to be the place to start to build up your reputation.
So artists of all persuasions, especially if you are just starting out: get thyself to blogger.com or wordpress.com and get yourselves known. It’s free and easy. For a small charge, you can record audio or video pieces, and place them on your blog as podcasts, and easily get yourself listed on iTunes. Stick to a particular theme if you can – from Kerry watercolours to Limerick gangland rap, from songs about being bullied at school to lesbian love poems, from video documentaries on exploited immigrant workers to cartoons as gaeilge. Don’t wait for approval from authority – let yourself be the authority, and let people find you, and get to know you.
You’ll get feedback and encouragement from all over the world if you’ve hit a nerve, and then people will start talking about you online and linking to your blog – and before you know it you’ll be top of the search engine listings in your particular area, if you’re any good. And with regular readers/listeners/viewers, you’ll have the beginnings of a fanbase – and then you have clout when it comes to selling your work in the more established media, and getting some return on your investment in time and effort.
If you’ve any artistic aspirations at all, you are keeping yourself invisible if you don’t have a blog.

Annette Clancy: www.inter-actions.biz/blog/2007/06/the_arts_and_blogging.html