Tuesday, October 26, 2010

To write or not to write

The thing about blogging is that there is no filter. Which is great in a lot of ways. You can't blame anyone else for what gets put up.  It's your own genius or stupidity.  But if you (and by you I mean me) are blogging in part to brush up on your writing skills, if your goal is to become a better writer, it's a longer, slower, windier road than if you had, say, a teacher or an editor telling you enough with the commas already.  Or that sentence is really boring, but that one is ok. And also, that is not a real word.  You get a B.   This is exactly how in my train of thought an editor would interact with me, except somehow there would be red ink all over everything (I don't care that it's all digital).

I think that once a blog or an author starts getting more feedback from readers themselves it can serve some of the purpose of an editor.  Readers can certainly be harsh enough - I read enough blogs to see some pretty direct criticism.  And the internet is pretty amazing in that it is one of the only forums where we can interact with total strangers without any sort of filter.  Back before it was around there were newspapers, magazines, radio, tv, even personal ads - but they were all to some degree filtered through at least one other layer.  This is great for freedom of speech, not so nice for accuracy sometimes.  Wonderful for individualism, not so amazing for grammar.  So basically, I guess, I'm kind of reaching a conclusion that everyone else got to ten years ago.  I love that I can write online, but sometimes for my own growth I wish there was a built in editor or critic.  I guess that's what writing classes are for.

Oh, by the way, if anyone wants to read some actual articles I've been writing about Brooklyn, check it out here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/791318/lucrezia_wise.html

Still no editor feedback, for the most part, but I try to stay more on track when writing these.

2 comments:

  1. Blogging is certainly trickier for people more interested in putting out complete thoughts rather than ramblings.

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  2. Totally. I like reading ramblings from certain people because they're entertaining. There is a fine line though between being open and connecting with people, and navel gazing. Lol.

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