Blogging with a delay
p. I found it unexpectedly hard to blog while I was in the US. I had thought that it might be difficult to write about my experiences after the fact, as weblogs (well, mine anyway) are meant to be spontaneous things. So I made sure that I actually wrote my posts on the day that they occurred to me. What I hadn’t anticipated was that it would matter if I didn’t publish the entry immediately — that was completely unexpected.
p. I’m still not sure why it matters. I think that it’s something to do with the fact that — in the usual course of weblogging — your thoughts and opinions surface, you write them down, and then you publish them. From that point on, they are more or less out of your control: for better or worse, they are released into the world and you must accept what follows. If you don’t publish immediately, creeping editorial doubts (the enemy of creative writing) surface. You start to tinker and fiddle, and before you know it, you’ve killed anything fresh and lively that they might have contained. For me, the weblogging mechanism seems to be an integral part of the writing process.
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this is especially true with the likes of google out there; if you don't get rid of a post almost immediately, google's cache takes things out one's hands; a particular problem if you're prone to drunken late-night rants that you regret the morning after. [not that i do that, no sir not me, nope...
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Writing in Tinderbox tends to slow me down a bit which I quite like because it forces me to think about what I am publishing. Things like LiveJournal or Blogger seem a bit more dangerous in that you can just rant a bit and then publish.
Question: Do you go back and edit once you have published?
I rarely go back to old postings although I am trying to organize my Tbox files a bit more sensibly.
by jb @ 08/04/2003 6:04 pm • Permalink •
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jb: No, I don't tend to go back (unless I see that I've forgetten to encode a pound sign properly, or something like that). I spend too much of my working life crossing all the 't's' and dotting the 'i's' so writing here is an exercise in freedom for me. I write it as well as I can at the time, without labouring over it too much, but once it's posted that's it. Some posts might be embarrassingly bad when I look back on them, but that helps me learn.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the odd rant if it's heartfelt.
by bsag @ 08/04/2003 7:04 pm • Permalink •
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Largely in the lines of what 'dvd' is saying, what happens if you had a real terrible day on the job, incidentally tipped back a few, and proceed to let loose a whirlstrum of verbal violance against your job, your boss, or even your clients? Erasing, or setting fire to your work, takes on a completely new meaning.
One site mentioned how somone "fabricated" via comments negative press against this person's blog (pseudofamous.com, I think). They shutdown soon after.
I think many people, who haven't had a bit to drink, exercise restrictive freedom in what they say. I'm not sure if this is true for you, but having to find a way to restrict the [removed]or curb the excess) can be a bit of a creative damper.
In any event, I'm waiting for someone to cookup a way to doodle a picture, and easily post it up as a blog entry. That way I can go the whole nine yards -- who hasn't doodled the bomb over the boss's head?
-Malv
by Malevolent @ 13/04/2003 8:04 pm • Permalink •
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Hmm, that's a difficult one. I think it depends on how you deal with things in what we laughingly refer to as real life. I don't tend to fly off the handle verbally, so I feel no great compulsion to do it in a blog. So the issue hasn't really come up in that way.
I might post something about this topic soon: it's a difficult line to tread (and is a fairly general problem not restricted to blogging). Watch this space...
by bsag @ 15/04/2003 9:04 pm • Permalink •
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Great comments guys. Peter FDA
by Peter @ 11/11/2003 6:11 am • Permalink •
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Hi Thank you for a great site, it is truly superb reading
by Bali Traveller @ 19/11/2003 12:11 pm • Permalink •
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