writing – Harmonia Philosophica

Free Blogging Advice (FBA) – Episode 5: Seek just one follower… Yourself!

Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.

FBA Episodes

We all seek recognition. This is indeed one of our small human traits that it is difficult to get rid of. But we must get rid of it, if we are to grow as writers (and as humans).

The quest for recognition can lead the writer to end up writing for others, thus polluting his own original thoughts with the thoughts he/she believes others want to read. One never had followers, it is you that will be following your followers at the end…

One should focus on the only thing that is important for a writer/ blogger: To write original content.

One follower should suffice: You!

Write from your heart and just ask yourself: would you be following… You? If the answer is yes, then seek nothing more. You already have the best recognition you will ever need.

And sure, recognition by others may also come afterwards. But as a side effect and only because others will see and feel that you are not writing what they need to listen, but because they will read things only you could ever tell them.

Let the writer rise from within.

Ignore your readers.

Or else they will kill the writer you could be.

And within the millions of followers you will never listen to the desperate agony of your dying self…

Who wrote what? It matters not.

The 17th century playwright Molière is as important to French literature as William Shakespeare is to the English canon. But for the past 100 years, a question has swirled around him: Did Molière really write his plays? Or was Pierre Corneille, another famous French playwright of the time, the true author? A new study uses computational methods to analyze subtle, unconscious elements of both authors’ writing and concludes that Molière did indeed write the plays attributed to him. (1)

But does it matter who wrote what?

In the old days people did not care about signing their works with their own name.

For what mattered, was what they wrote.

Go on.

Write down your name.

Do you see?

You are not you!

You are Homer.

You are Nietzsche.

You are Shestov.

You are me.

You are you.

You are No-one!

Free Blogging Advice (FBA) – Episode 4: From whom are you writing?

FBA Episodes

There comes a time where any blogger wonders…

“Why am I doing this?”

This question can arise more than once in the beginning of your blogging endeavor and it will also come up later in time after you have established yourself as a known blogger. (or I would better say it SHOULD come up again after you have succeeded as a blogger – more on that later on)

Not being able to answer that simple question usually ends up in full demotivation and eventually to the end of your dream to become a blogger and share your ideas with the world.

But is there a right answer for that question?

Truth be told, there is not.

But there are many wrong ones.

Aristotle once very intuitively said that “the question contains the answer”…

This couldn’t be more applicable here.

Some say they are blogging for their followers…

That is so nice. Except that if you are writing for the ones who read you, then you will inevitably become just a puppet belonging fully to them. A writer does not care about who reads him. He (or she) simply writes whatever is in his head just… because! Creativity is a deeply irrational urge, not a calculative urge to gain more followers or retain the ones you have. Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive.

Some say that they are blogging to share knowledge…

Some say they are blogging because of other reasons…

That is the great trap though. That you need a reason to blog.

If blogging does not come from deep inside you, there is no reason you should be doing it in the first place. If you need a reason to blog, then you should stop right now. Because the moment that reason seizes to exist, that will be the moment when everything will look useless and futile. And a true writer never sees his (or her) work as futile or useless! Pure creation is never done under special conditions or within specific context. It just flows out from you.

Search within you.

Imagine yourself after many years blogging.

Having written thousands of posts.

With zero followers.

Zero page views.

Will you be happy?

Will you feel full?

Only you can answer that.

And when you answer this question you will understand.

Why everyone asking “Whom am I writing for?” is simply trying to find a reason not to…

Free Blogging Advice: Embrace imperfection!

FBA Episodes

One of the things bloggers find difficult to cope with, is the fact that their site is not perfect.

Most of us are perfectionists, especially when it comes to the child of our creativity. Our site should be flawless, full of perfect articles, with embedded perfect pictures, saying perfect things.

The truth is much more different than that though.

Every human is imperfect. We constantly change and grow, we learn and forget, we are literally a new person every passing second as Harmonia Philosophica has explained more than once in various philosophical contexts.

How do you expect your blog to be perfect?

Being perfect was never the goal in the first place.

The goal is to expose your thoughts to the cosmos. To let out your thoughts and give others the opportunity to get to know them. Perhaps even reply back and establish a community wandering about the same things.

A blog is a window that exposes your soul to the world.

Trying to believe that what others see through that window needs to be perfect is simply a denial of your very nature. No matter how much you try to make things perfect, there will always be things that could be done better, small spelling mistakes, broken links or missing images.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you must not do your best to have a perfect site. I am just emphasizing the fact that if this is the first and only thing you care about you will indeed have a perfect unpublished site…

Blogging is about letting go.

Blogging is about having fun.

And who can have fun while trying to play everything to perfection?

Experiment!

Write!

Love what you do!

Your blog will ALWAYS be imperfect!

That is what makes is so perfect…

Why people suffer? – Call for philosophical essays

Humans are averted to suffering. We do not wish to ache or cry.

Yet, life is full of pain.

Why?

Of what use is that pain?

How could good people suffer while others are spared the day? Is there a plan behind all this or are we just trying to discover meaning where there is nothing to find or say?

Send your essays to Harmonia Philosophica (harmoniaPhilosophica.com) and see them published in our portal. All submissions adhering to the submission requirements will be published, unless you wish not to.

Submission Requirements

Minimum length: 50 words.
Content: Submissions must be relative to the topic and have a philosophical flavor.
Publication indication: Please indicate explicitly in your submission whether you wish us to publish your essay and under what name (could be an alias). Essays that do not explicitly mention these publication details will not be published due to data protection regulations.
Deadline: December 2022.
Contact info: harmonia-philosophica@hotmail.com

Seek Harmonia Philosophica article ‘Why do good people suffer?‘ for inspiration.

Looking forward to your ideas!