writing vs. blogging
Apr. 25th, 2006 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70Hmmm, this gives me pause.
http://www.slate.com/id/2140095/?nav=navoa
excerpts:
...I realized something: Blogging wasn't helping me write; it was keeping me from it.
and
...I started to feel that jokes and scenarios and turns of phrase were my capital... and each blog entry was scattering more of it to the wind, pissing away precious dollars and cents in the form of punch lines I could never use again, not without feeling like a hack. You know: "How sad. She stole that line from her own blog."
I hate the interpretation of blog prose as "capital" (must everything be interpreted through a capitalist/business paradigm, fer chrissakes?!), although the analogy has a certain logic. However, it is based on the idea that there is a finite amount of good prose in a given author, and that pissing it away on a blog is not a good plan if you ever plan to "really" write.
I'm not sure I agree that a given author has a finite amount of good prose in her/him. Also, many great authors have often ripped themselves off over the courses of their careers. (I know this to be true, but I'm blanking on names at the moment...)
Nevertheless, it's a thought-provoking article. I have suspected myself of the same thing -- writing fanfic, instead of "real" fic, because (a) it's easier, and (b) stakes are not very high. It's one thing if no one reads your online story in the midst of millions and millions of other fanfic stories. It's quite another to get rejection slips from publishers. Not that I'd know what that is like...
I used to be quite a diarist myself -- as most young girls & depressives are, I suppose -- in long-hand, in spiral bound notebooks; and after I began working in computers in '88, by typing (first on a mainframe, then on PCs...). Now I just have a dream diary for those really strange dreams.
And, of course, this site... which I don't spend much time on, actually, compared to the average blogger I suppose. There is a simple reason for it, though: I can't. I don't have enough time, and I'm trying to pull my ass out of a 3 year slump which included losing my job, going back to school, almost getting engaged & then having the relationship fall apart (twice, if you go back 6 years instead of 3), losing my deteriorating father, getting into nursing school, trying to survive & pass nursing school (in progress), multiple hospitalizations of my step-dad, ongoing crash-and-burn with my ex, and now dealing with a mother who has just been definitively diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the lung, and is scheduled for surgery this Saturday. And all on what the average woman would call "the wrong side of 35."
Maybe someday I will have the time & endurance to spend more time online... but it's a double-edged sword, which the Slate article points out -- at least if you ever have ambitions of writing, which I did, secretly, for years, until I thought it was too late for me. But I've learned in the last 3 years it's never too late for anything... you just have to be prepared to adjust more than you would have when you were younger, and be prepared for it to be more uncomfortable. For a while.
But. It. Goes. On. And having so much death, illness, deterioration, fuckups and even near-death surrounding me the last few years -- while severely depressing me at times -- has also given me a new appreciation for life. For RL. When you realize how easily it can be snuffed out, it sort of makes spending a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon indoors by a computer seem like a major waste of the little time you might have left.
And yet, of course, here I am... and now here I go. RL drags me away again -- to the hospital to get my patient assignments & all the particulars from their charts so I can spend hours tonight writing up clinical prep and pathophysiology docs... but, mostly, driving to the hospital in the sun with both windows down & listening to my CDs.
The only thing that would be better than this is riding my bike with my MP3 player & headphones on, the spring sunshine beating down on my head & the breeze in my wind-tossed hair. I guess maybe I am too much a sensualist to live entirely in blogs, online, virtually, IM-ing -- even if I had the time and the physical health, wrist endurance, etc. Plus they haven't yet created the William Gibson cyberpunk simstim (simulated stimulation) toy he wrote of (or equivalent to the movie Strange Days' SQUID technology) that simulates a real life encounter with anything by stimulating your brain stem and your eyes, ears, nose, sense of touch and taste. And that would be the only thing that could tempt someone (like me) who likes the look and smell and feel and sound and touch and taste of things to stay completely indoors gloved, goggled, and headphoned.
Of course, I also don't yet live in a dystopian future where the air, weather, pollution, &/or totalitarian government outside your tiny home are so bad that you must stay indoors for your safety, either... if I did, I might prefer the simulated stimulation.
And so I end on a dystopian scifi note. Oh well.
Off to the sunshine & unfortunate details of the medical histories of unwell people.
http://www.slate.com/id/2140095/?nav=navoa
excerpts:
...I realized something: Blogging wasn't helping me write; it was keeping me from it.
and
...I started to feel that jokes and scenarios and turns of phrase were my capital... and each blog entry was scattering more of it to the wind, pissing away precious dollars and cents in the form of punch lines I could never use again, not without feeling like a hack. You know: "How sad. She stole that line from her own blog."
I hate the interpretation of blog prose as "capital" (must everything be interpreted through a capitalist/business paradigm, fer chrissakes?!), although the analogy has a certain logic. However, it is based on the idea that there is a finite amount of good prose in a given author, and that pissing it away on a blog is not a good plan if you ever plan to "really" write.
I'm not sure I agree that a given author has a finite amount of good prose in her/him. Also, many great authors have often ripped themselves off over the courses of their careers. (I know this to be true, but I'm blanking on names at the moment...)
Nevertheless, it's a thought-provoking article. I have suspected myself of the same thing -- writing fanfic, instead of "real" fic, because (a) it's easier, and (b) stakes are not very high. It's one thing if no one reads your online story in the midst of millions and millions of other fanfic stories. It's quite another to get rejection slips from publishers. Not that I'd know what that is like...
I used to be quite a diarist myself -- as most young girls & depressives are, I suppose -- in long-hand, in spiral bound notebooks; and after I began working in computers in '88, by typing (first on a mainframe, then on PCs...). Now I just have a dream diary for those really strange dreams.
And, of course, this site... which I don't spend much time on, actually, compared to the average blogger I suppose. There is a simple reason for it, though: I can't. I don't have enough time, and I'm trying to pull my ass out of a 3 year slump which included losing my job, going back to school, almost getting engaged & then having the relationship fall apart (twice, if you go back 6 years instead of 3), losing my deteriorating father, getting into nursing school, trying to survive & pass nursing school (in progress), multiple hospitalizations of my step-dad, ongoing crash-and-burn with my ex, and now dealing with a mother who has just been definitively diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the lung, and is scheduled for surgery this Saturday. And all on what the average woman would call "the wrong side of 35."
Maybe someday I will have the time & endurance to spend more time online... but it's a double-edged sword, which the Slate article points out -- at least if you ever have ambitions of writing, which I did, secretly, for years, until I thought it was too late for me. But I've learned in the last 3 years it's never too late for anything... you just have to be prepared to adjust more than you would have when you were younger, and be prepared for it to be more uncomfortable. For a while.
But. It. Goes. On. And having so much death, illness, deterioration, fuckups and even near-death surrounding me the last few years -- while severely depressing me at times -- has also given me a new appreciation for life. For RL. When you realize how easily it can be snuffed out, it sort of makes spending a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon indoors by a computer seem like a major waste of the little time you might have left.
And yet, of course, here I am... and now here I go. RL drags me away again -- to the hospital to get my patient assignments & all the particulars from their charts so I can spend hours tonight writing up clinical prep and pathophysiology docs... but, mostly, driving to the hospital in the sun with both windows down & listening to my CDs.
The only thing that would be better than this is riding my bike with my MP3 player & headphones on, the spring sunshine beating down on my head & the breeze in my wind-tossed hair. I guess maybe I am too much a sensualist to live entirely in blogs, online, virtually, IM-ing -- even if I had the time and the physical health, wrist endurance, etc. Plus they haven't yet created the William Gibson cyberpunk simstim (simulated stimulation) toy he wrote of (or equivalent to the movie Strange Days' SQUID technology) that simulates a real life encounter with anything by stimulating your brain stem and your eyes, ears, nose, sense of touch and taste. And that would be the only thing that could tempt someone (like me) who likes the look and smell and feel and sound and touch and taste of things to stay completely indoors gloved, goggled, and headphoned.
Of course, I also don't yet live in a dystopian future where the air, weather, pollution, &/or totalitarian government outside your tiny home are so bad that you must stay indoors for your safety, either... if I did, I might prefer the simulated stimulation.
And so I end on a dystopian scifi note. Oh well.
Off to the sunshine & unfortunate details of the medical histories of unwell people.