Thu 19 Jan 2006
I am so salty I corrode myself. See below post.
So here is a post about posting. I have been posting more often lately and I feel like a bad cover to Franz Ferdinand song (postie postie I’m so postie!) except about blogging. I have been able to get the gumption to sit down and be temporarily creative. Good for me. This can make for an interesting web space but not for real inspiration. I sit down, think it up and spit it out but the posts, they are episodic. A real piece of writing needs work and more thought than an evening and two glasses of whiskey. Bree does it sometimes on the Origi-bopand I see examles of it on Jason’s Blog and Gillian’s.
Perhaps we can see a little improvement or more complex posts in the future.
Only two glasses? Ha!
My favourite posts are the ones that just flow spontaneously. They’re usually written in one session, but more frequently with coffee than booze. I feel that when I spend too much time working over a post, it sounds stilted and boring. Sometimes I worry too much and edit out the most lively parts.
I like it when I can just rant about one thing, and don’t have to pause too long or too often to think about how to say something. It’s also my favorite way to speak!
BTW: When you guys are married, I think I will call you Mr. and Mrs. Bop!
For some reason, the posts from my blog that people respond to the most are ones that just came out as ramblings. If I think I’m being incredibly creative and witty, I’m probably not. I think people just want you to be yourself.
I figure in your case it just takes practice, and not taking it all too seriously. I’ve given myself writer’s block off-and-on by getting too worried about whether my writing is good or meaningful or whatever. We just want to read what’s on your mind, eh?
I like that blogs are episodic. For some of us, the idea of having to write pages of text at once would probably stop us from writing at all.
I see the theme of the wise ones here. Perhaps my need to write in the long format should be excercised else where. Is the blog a great hippie orgy of instant gratification and free wheeling expression? Cool man, ‘ere!’
Absolutely baby. It’s all about the free love. And by that, I mean comments.
I find now that I have blogged for three years or so, my mind has become more sensitive to blog-sized issues or bits of information and oddity. Because my memory is the way it is, I hastily scribble said bits on my iPaq or a handy moleskine book (oh, that hemingway cachet). It’s a mix for me: sometimes I sit down, peruse the net and pick something to pontificate about (ironic pun intended), and sometimes I get that scribbled issue out and pound away at the pulpit, er, keyboard, until the issue is out and so are my thoughts. There are times when I save up a post which I don’t think is ready yet, but it rarely if ever makes it out of my saved posts archive alive.
Practice brings out the quality - blog, blog, blog and the true gems will appear. And as your baby said, you’ll know it’s a good one by the free lovin’.
That being said, you can always use the more button in your post editor - that way your longer ramblings won’t prevent people from seeing the quality “below the fold.”
First of all, my dear sea dog, thanks for the nod in the post — always brings a proud tear to my eye when someone recognises the sheer amount of toil involved in a good wordsmithin’…
I find that the practice of wordcraft is much like one’s midsection in a swimsuit — once you get out of it, you fall out of form pretty quickly. Try it on once or twice, and you’re suddenly aware of the unsightly bits that weren’t there last summer when you were workin’ on it every day. Oh sure, you can primp and preen, use makeup, light, shadow and clever angles to make things look a mite like the used to; but even when the accolades (or paycheques, as the case may be) come, you know the truth.
Like that beer gut, high C over E, or the grand jeté followed by intricate pointe work, you can do it again — unlike when you were 22, however, it takes more than just a fifteen minute warmup and a shot of scotch to get you there.
First of all, my dear sea dog, thanks for the nod in your post — always brings a proud tear to my eye when someone recognises the sheer amount of toil involved in a good wordsmithin’…
I find that the practice of wordcraft is much like one’s midsection in a swimsuit — once you get out of it, you fall out of form pretty quickly. Try it on once or twice, and you’re suddenly aware of the unsightly bits that weren’t there last summer when you were workin’ on it every day. Oh sure, you can primp and preen, use makeup, light, shadow and clever angles to make things look a mite like the used to; but even when the accolades (or paycheques, as the case may be) come, you know the truth.
Like that beer gut, high C over E, or the grand jeté followed by intricate pointe work, you can do it again — unlike when you were 22, however, it takes more than just a fifteen minute warmup and a shot of scotch to get you there.