Blogging Like Ursula K. Le Guin.

I am working my way through reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog, which she began in 2010, at the age of 81, and continued right up until 2018. She passed away the following year. I am reading through the archive in chronological order, starting with the older posts.

Le Guin is well-known and widely-acclaimed in the world of science fiction and fantasy (though perhaps not as acclaimed as she’d have been if she were a man), and in so-called literary fiction. I find it odd that within the literary world there is such an urge to compartmentalise works into “literary fiction” or “genre fiction”, with the implication that genre fiction is somehow the lesser of the two. I’m no expert, but I think if there’s anyone that can prove the blurriness of the line between these two categories, it’s Le Guin.

I find it interesting that in Le Guin’s award-winning Earthsea series (among her most widely-known work), much praise is directed in particular at the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, and the third, The Farthest Shore. In contrast, while I enjoyed these immensely, I felt especially drawn to The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu, the second and fourth books respectively. Notably, both of these feature female protagonists. The stories she weaves for these women and girls do not shy away from the trauma of rape and exploitation (absent from most male-written fantasy, at least that which I’ve encountered), but also empower them: they are defiant, brave, complex women, and their stories are intricate and gripping. This is one of the reasons why am so taken with Le Guin’s writing, and why it’s such a gift to have so much of it preserved on her website.

What I find so compelling about her blog is the way it offers a window into her life and thoughts. There is no particular theme. It feels at once an exercise in simply writing, as a writer might do at the start of the day as a “warm up”, and a way to get her thoughts in order. I identify strongly with that, as I write for those reasons too. It’s what I’m doing right now. I write in order to know what I think, to paraphrase the quote attributed to Joan Didion. I love that in the very first post she muses on the word “blog” and where it came from, without bothering to look it up — it is the writer and her thoughts, caught in mid-flow.

The gift Le Guin has left us is something to treasure. In her blog, I feel I am reaching through time and touching her mind. And although it’s a mere shade of this literary great, this is what I try to do with this blog too. It’s for no one but myself, but maybe someday if another person wants a little glimpse into my head, well, here it is.