peer pressure

I've been trying to gently prod some of my friends to start their own blogs. Yes, I realize that it's not an entirely altruistic suggestion - as my morning ritual of tea and reading through new posts before settling into work has become a real pleasure that kick-starts my every day, and adding more to my friends list makes for a longer, more drawn-out version of that daily experience - but it's also more than that. I know that some of them have interesting takes on reality and have a real gift for writing: it just seems wrong that it isn't out there to share (and not only with me!).

There's one in particular I've been leaning on more heavily - she does write, is a writer, and always has snippets of writings on the go - she's practically blogging already, but in an offline form. I've appealed to her sense of practicality ("It keeps your thoughts organized! No more scraps of paper!), her intrigue of novelty ("It's so fun!"), her spotty correspondence record ("Well, we are too busy to write, and phoning is expensive - we can keep up this way!"), but no dice. Yet.

The other day I returned to my idle computer to find an IM flashing at the bottom of my screen. She had checked this blog out, and was sufficiently intrigued. "Seems like a wonderful forum of expression. I will definately look into starting one. Private meets voyeuristic...". Nothing from her since, but I'm waiting patiently, with fingers crossed...

Her IM ended with a question:

"Do you find that the words written down change when
there is a possible audience?"

An interesting one - that I haven't quite been able to answer yet. So far my response is a fence-sitting cop-out. "Maybe, I'm not really sure." It's a tough one to answer; particularly because I know that 'my readers' are all friends who know and love me - flaws and lousy grammar and run-on sentences and all. Would that shift if I were to make this puppy public? Or, to think of it another way - don't words always, inevitably change once they've been written and read? Sometimes they morph in meaning even when I'm the one doing the reading, and I can sense a shift in my thoughts even after this little amount of time...that's part of what I'm loving so much about this little experiment. And I can see it in others' as well...

So I'll stay vague on that one for now, and think on it a little bit more. I wonder if it would influence her decision to sign on and join the little collective we've begun here if I answer one way or another?