I have not been writing so much on my blog lately. I feel dully guilty about this.<\/p>\n
But not too guilty, because I have been trying to write a lot in other places. Places like my hard drive, which are not published.<\/p>\n
I like publishing my writing, and I like my blog. Before I had my blog, I spent a huge amount of time writing emails. Emails are at least read by ONE person, I hope. I enjoy the attention, I have to say.<\/p>\n
My email style tends to the ponderous, however. I think what I say is generally interesting, but it can get really long.<\/p>\n
I guess I’m an e-conversation hog.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, I noticed myself getting embroiled in long and involved, complicated e-conversations. I found myself composing the emails in my head as i went about my life: “…and this illustrates my previous point…”<\/p>\n
This began to worry me. How much of one (or two or three or four) people’s attention could I monopolize? I thought that my emails were no longer really working well in the medium I was using.<\/p>\n
But I was impressed by what I had written, I felt that I had reached some new understanding through the discourse. I didn’t throw them away.<\/p>\n
But I realized that the effort I was putting into these writings was inefficient. I should put my creative energy into something a little more universal than a RE: subject line could encompass.<\/p>\n
I thought I should spend time writing for real, not emails.<\/p>\n
But I missed the audience. I missed knowing that it would be read.<\/p>\n
It seemed empty, words not read like a tree falling alone in the forest. Did they really matter?<\/p>\n
I was very pleased with the arrival of blogs. I have tremendously enjoyed my blog. Recently, I have been pushing really hard to write and post and post. I enjoy posting. And I really like posting on Blogcritics<\/a>, because the readership is even larger there.<\/p>\n But I am brought up once again. I have the same problem with the blog that I had in email. My blogposts are somewhat ponderous. The popular blogs, it seems to me, are not as wordy as mine. People don’t want to spend a half and hour reading something on a computer monitor.<\/p>\n Well, it depends what it is. Maybe if it’s REALLY GOOD, then they might.<\/p>\n So. Then I have to be REALLY GOOD if I want to follow my inclination to ramble on and on.<\/p>\n Or maybe ( and here we are at the same place again) the blog is not the proper medium for some of the things I feel like I need to write.<\/p>\n Blogs seem to be an Extrospective kind of writing. People are commenting on politics, on popular culture, movies, TV, music, whatever. Toss off an opinion, a fact, a perspective, this seems to be what blogs are good for.<\/p>\n I can do that. I throw out my take on various subjects, books and movies especially. I think I do it reasonably well, although one commentor recently gave me the distinction of writing the worst movie review ever (it was for Waiting for Guffman<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n But what about introspective? This particular posting is introspective. I’m not apologetic about it, but I realize that it invites a different readership with a different mindset than the extrospective stuff.<\/p>\n And maybe that mindset is not engaged by the computer screen.<\/p>\n AND<\/p>\n maybe the type of writing that I am trying to do needs a little more room than a blogpost can comfortably give me.<\/p>\n Interesting tangent: Blogposts have to achieve some kind of completion at the end. But writing, the kind that you get up and do for 2 hours every morning, does not need completion before you stop. The point is, it’s bigger than you can accomplish at one sitting.<\/p>\n And maybe that’s the next rung.<\/p>\n I admit, it is very satisfying to write a blogpost and finish it. It takes more discipline and organization to work on a long story and finish it.<\/p>\n I’d like to write longer stories though.<\/p>\n And I’ve been trying to work on it. Which is why my posting has slowed a bit.<\/p>\n It’s a shift of focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have not been writing so much on my blog lately. I feel dully guilty about this. But not too guilty, because I have been trying to write a lot in other places. Places like my hard drive, which are … Continue reading
\nI wonder how large MT allows posts to be? Hmm…<\/p>\n