Monday, October 20, 2008

Why I Blog

There is an excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly by Andrew Sullivan titled “Why I Blog.” I highlighted a few of the points :
  • Blogging rewards brevity… it’s a broadcast, not a publication.
  • We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges.
  • A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing – and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
  • Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.
  • It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.
The bullet points are just the pieces I identify with as a blogger -- a real blogger, once a upon a time, four years ago to be exact. We did daily blogging for a year and it was time consuming, fun, intoxicating, and creative. We have kept it up in bursts, which works for us, but not so much for regular readers. I hope to start again, but it depends on how much time the day job requires. I doubt I or we will reach our halcyon days of that first year, but that is okay and to some extent preferable. I found myself writing to an audience or for a reaction rather than writing for me.

5 comments:

Jack Steiner said...

I am still here.

The Misanthrope said...

Jack, you are a blogging marvel. Should you ever fold the blogging tent it will be a sad day for bloggers everywhere.

Jack Steiner said...

I don't know about that, I am a bit of a hack.

libhom said...

Of all of Sullivan's points, only the second to last one makes much sense to me. Then again, I usually don't think much of Sullivan's reasoning or philosophies.

The Misanthrope said...

Hi Libhom, the penultimate bullet is my favorite too.