Bloggy Question 19 — A Blogging Life of Fiction

August 20, 2006 by Liz

What Do I Owe You?

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week, I offer this Blogging Question. This event really happened.

A blogger who wrote a personal blog about his life as a gas station attendant, who worked at a station across the road from a university in Tennessee or Kentucky, decided to stop blogging. He was a blogger with a following — 20 or 30 comments per post wasn’t unusual.

This blogger and his fans were a community. They shared inside jokes, histories, and details about their families. Some readers had planned to drive down to see him.

In the last post when he signed off, the blogger stated quite simply that everything he had said about his life was fiction. He was not a gas station attendant. He was a student at said university.

The blogger claimed his right to tell the extended blogging story in the tradition of fiction writers such as Samuel Clemens. What’s your response to this blogging fiction?

–ME “Liz” Strauss