No LL
Regular readers know that I'm very fond of this idea of blogging. Several times in the past I wrote posts about how wonderful this blogging stuff is. Today, I'd like to mention one of the down sides.
Last week I posted a blog called Water. When I started writing it, my intention was to add another facet to the jewel which is living the simple life. I wanted to relate how happy we were to be self sufficient in managing fresh water. I started by reciting the facts of how much water we carry and how we fetch it. Then, I got carried away with more and more facts, then I ran out of time and posted it as-is. The end result sounds whiny, as if I were complaining.
Editors, publishers, and professional writers, have long known that top quality writing needs review after review and plenty of elapsed time to contemplate what's written before publishing it. I always hated that. Back in the days when I wrote peer reviewed scientific papers, it took 6-18 months between writing something and seeing it in print. That wait was agony. Today, when I write a magazine article it takes 3-4 months to get it published and I still hate the delay.
Blogging caters to instant gratification. Write a word, click on Publish and it's done. I love that, but I acknowledge that such indulgence doesn't produce the best quality writing. Typos and minor grammar errors aren't so serious, but when I mangle the essential message as I did in Water, I really regret it.
So, am I going to change my policy? No. Am I going to revise the Water post? No. Despite the disadvantage of instant posting, it provides something important -- contemporaneousness. When you relate something as it happens or when it first pops into your head that is a contemporaneous account. It has a fresh quality and it has accuracy that you can never duplicate after-the-fact. If you rewrite things when they are no longer fresh, or if you revise and republish past posts, the result is very different. It is like the difference between a diary and a memoir.
Think of this blog as diary-like with all the plus and minus baggage that comes with that.
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Hi Dick,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed that post and didn't find it whiny or complaint-ish at all. I read a lot about cruising though so I'm used to the whole water issue. (I *READ*, I don't *DO* unfortunately. I'm getting closer though, we're going on our first charter in March!)