Friday, August 29, 2008
Why Blogging Isn't Always Good for Writers
In the comments section of the previous post Suzanne wonders why more MFA students don’t write blogs. I found this to be an excellent question, because this problem was already on my mind and now I get to act like blogging about blogging was someone else’s idea.
Sweating the blog is not due to concern about typos or spellings or grammar, though I am ashamed when I make those mistakes. That’s actually copy editing as opposed to writing, but try telling that to people. Just for fun, I’m also deeply ashamed of any less than ideal code on mintJelly, which compounds my mortification (if programmers see my guilty slapdash use of inline aligned divs for throwing up images they’ll scoff and not like me anymore).
The marital problems between blog-writing and writing-writing has everything to do with brain content and wad-blowing. But it’s also about subtle things that MFA programs pick apart as craft. Online, I feel am self-conscious and read a lot of self-conscious writing, but self-awareness is what I need to recognize and practice.
My long-winded babbling blog is written more how I talk, not how I write (unless you think something’s good, in which case it was on purpose).
I use a lot of the second-person “you” here. Normally that language is found in advertising, news, or to get in your reader’s face, which is not cool in most literary writing. Marketers and journalists address the public with the aggressive, presumptive, second-person pushiness used by people in positions of illegitimate power (do I sound like an MFA student yet? eesh). I despise all that sort of force-feeding jazz that hopes my brain isn’t strong enough to snap out of the “you” that is like headlights to a deer. I yell at the tv.
You, my sweet reader(s), you I address personally to reclaim the “you” that is all of us, while also poking fun at this internet “platform” that lends me any credibility.
Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life
Forget anything as complicated as time, and just try to sustain the tone, mood, and flow of even 500 words before you lose it the thread, before something happens. Or before you run out of energy. I’m just a creme puff, I only have about that much steam.
Writing literature happens in an elusive zone. It’s solitary, it’s focused and hard and most people rather perform home surgery with tweezers than sit alone and write. The zone only exists during a personally-felt time of day. It’s like sleeping to dream. You can lay down, you can sleep. Most of the time you don’t wake up with an awesome dream you remember clearly. Usually you wake up too soon because you have to pee.
You can’t wait for God to walk through the room and then decide to get into the zone. Though it’s nice if that happens.
If you’re writing a very nonfiction, nonliterary book, where the tone is conversational or the same as your blog, maybe you’re describing or giving instructions about something, talking about dog training or cupcakes or how to find the best wedding planner, it’s not the same state of being. Sure, you have to pay attention to lots of things, but I am fairly sure it’s not the same as writing about “the human condition,” writing about getting molested or divorced, for example. To write about the latter you have to travel through time, become possessed, relive and let that part of yourself die, so you can write about it with the cool control of a reliable and skilled narrator as opposed to a hysteric. Then the author has to publish, oh the humanity… and find a way to make peace while merging the inner and outer world of public face, private lives, family, work, etc.
Check the people who publish books and blog like mad, and I’m going to guess they either write about an easily digested subject matter, or have already published their most grueling work. That, or their entire family died in a freak accident, leaving them millions and nothing whatsoever to worry about.
Yesterday I wanted to blog about similarities between the book Origins
A blog post practically wrote itself, about how frustrating it is as as an American during times of elections and war, to know so little world history, particularly when the facts do explain and contextualize the tensions and events going on right now. In July I wrote a book review of Origins for The Brooklyn Rail, and the book still has the color-coded tabs I stuck to passages, so I started making notes on obvious parallels with geeky gusto. I did some googling, and as per usual those tabs are still open to remind me of what I started.
From my point of view, that’s a fun post to make, though it’s got just a small chance of being appreciated by someone who wants perspective on the last hundred years of mid east history, or to get a good nonfiction book recommendation. Now I’m not sure if I’ll blog about Origins and Persepolis, despite the groundwork done. Probably, I’ve wasted my time and blown the wad of energy, thought and curiosity that might have led me to zone out an write for real like a good girl. As I write this post I know it’s what I’m doing to myself today. This much here, regardless of the light tone or whatever, does not bode well for other writing.
Having posted, I feel a false sense of accomplishment and contribution.
Blogging is a great way for a writer to procrastinate and make it look like they’re working. The backfire is that it requires a lot more mental energy than doing the dishes or laundry, so you’re sure to blow your wad and have wasted precious hours of eyeball and back non-discomfort on non-real-writing.
And anyway, posts like I like to make aren’t even good blog posts. Posts written in one sitting in a short amount of time are better. Short posts are better. Best if they’re personal but universal. Short paragraphs. Big pictures. Links.
I’ve got the link part down, but I rather talk about my externally-based passions than my internal ones, and that got its start — and was strongly reinforced — by too many occasions where talking about my social/personal life on mintJelly led some (unstable) individuals to believe that that was the be-all, end-all of my life, and given a tiny taste of concrete, they abstracted my life into their imaginary story of me (or “us”, more disturbingly).
When it comes to personal revelation, I am aware that I swerve between button-ed up raincoat, dark sunglasses and a hat to opening that raincoat to flash strangers.
My “about” pages are a mess because of the conflict I have when it comes to sharing personal information. I think in the future I will have more concrete information so that less can be inferred according to the whims of the reader, but I also know better than to think I can control everything with a few well-chosen words (well, in a book you can, but not on the internet).
There was a reason I defined myself using only quotes from a book of fiction in the about pages. It was written while I was being stalked by a man twice my age who decided he needed me to have his baby (probably a bad idea for me to be writing this now but you know what, this is my damn blog). The reference to being in police protection and experiencing proposals of “lonely men” was a joke to myself, but also I hoped, an amusing quote about book deals and a play on the word “proposal.”
During the the same time period, I made my Twitter private and got rid of my Twitter feed to this blog (99% likely I’ll put it back in). I didn’t like to blog because it triggered unwanted emails from the stalker person who seemed to think that everything I wrote online was a veiled message to him. The connections and jumps and leaping to conclusions made in his mind with just a tiny bit of writing, up against everything in his life..... the human psyche.... it’s a very deep, black well.
That was worse than the time a few years ago when a quiet but friendly coworker assumed I was single because I subtitled something “Singular Girl” and he didn’t get that it was a reference to a Jets to Brazil song. He also apparently didn’t know the definition of singular, and that it does not actually mean single any more than “singe” does. Also… that the definition of single is not “wants to date you.”
I didn’t flirt with him or go out with him. He never asked about my personal life or indicated (that he was a jerky psycho?), but as long as I wasn’t blogging every day about “me and my boyfriend!” it let him build, and build, and build an imaginary world, until he revealed his intentions via email after my last day in that office. He sputtered with self-righteous betrayal and rage (fun!) that because of the blog and “singular girl” subtitle he thought I was single and could therefor have me for his. He railed and spewed email venom at me for not being more “open” (about my personal life while I was there being a consultant. makes sense right? um, yeah, no.) and further demonstrated that he was the last person in the world anyone would want to have a relationship with. Thankfully I’ve not heard from him since. Not true for the more recent stalker-type in the paragraph above. I’ve put it out of my mind for the most part, but it does make me evaluate what I do or don’t include here. Which is hella lame. But fine. And normal, and a tired old problem to bitch about.
Vanity and geekery make me want to hook up everything. Hell, track me with GPS! Watch me go for a run, bitch about the price of milk, slip in an out of moods. It’s great until someone decides you’re going to have their baby, when all you have in reality is their IP address and a mutual friend.
If only I blogged about people and events while they were happening — like you’re supposed to. Regularity and timeliness seem to be very, very key elements of good blog writing and a feeling of continuity.
My mom’s having shoulder surgery today. I sort of wanted to blog about that, but I’d only end up talking about my own shoulder problems, then my jacked up body parts, the surgeries I had and ones I wonder if I’ll need. I’d either sound egocentric and uncaring, or feel like I blog about my mother all the time.
I’m having a worse than normal allergic reaction to food preservatives right now. I could blog about that, how I have some big itchy welts that look like giant mosquito bites, and on my thighs I’ve scratched so hard some blood vessels have broken. The worst is my knees, elbows and ass. To sit and not claw my right elbow, and then my whole body, is hilariously tricky right now. Under my hair, behind my ears. I’m going crazy paying attention to it. If I were a better writer, or had the right energy I could (should be able to. atta girl!) write about the folly and humor of mild self-destruction. I guess. Someone else will write that and I’ll be annoyed.
Weeks ago I wanted to blog about the use of the word “I” after coming across an article in the New York Times. Recently, I’ve wanted to blog about David Duchovny, Mama Mia, summer, moving, people who think we should agree upon misspelled words, em dashes, the asterisk, vintage barbie clothes, the first firefly I caught this summer, ComicCon, software I tried, how much I hate product repackaging, and how many words were invented by Shakespeare. And so on.
Some of them I saw as timely. I should have written them when I thought of them, then simply scheduled the pub date with the awesome publishing tool that is Expression Engine. Others, I simply haven’t gotten around to, due to work writing, code writing, non-internet writing, and preferred activities like cuddling and eating in front of the television.
So all those ideas for posts have become a pile of writing I feel I “should” do. Looking down the barrel of a book and a scholarly research paper, my gut says that is the last thing I need in my life.
But why not blog? The more you write the more you hone your skill. Be prolific, not lazy. Atta girl! Think on the page. How could this hurt? Wouldn’t it actually be awesome if I got up at 7am, sat down and wrote thoughtful posts? Sure, but it’d be way better if I sat down and wrote for school. Going for a run, eating breakfast, or snoozing and spooning would also be better, and enrich my life in a more directly-felt way.
Poor bloggy, so neglected.
Sitting down to write for school, I can’t used links, make easy, mental short-hand references to brands or pop culture. The goal is not to make the writing timely like on a blog, but timeless like in literature you want to read more than once.
In memoir I’m supposed to be the writer in control, as well as the character out of control, while playing with my cards face up, just for starters. I don’t have words to describe the swirls I try to make straight. The only safe and constructive place to show (some kinds of) work is in a quality workshop with professors experienced writers who’ve seen it all. I learned a long time ago, the hard way, to never ever show family or friends what you’re writing (and i’m trying to figure out how I can keep them from reading anything published heh). I think there’s a lot of nonfiction that translates most excellently to the web, but not my kind. At least not right now. And not when ex bosses and moms and exes read this silly thing and think they can learn about my life and form opinions that way. If anything, I’d like to one day write really thoroughly about the difference between online information, persona and the real world identity. Years ago I found I couldn’t tolerate reading the blogs of people I knew, because of this disconnect, even though I know it’s just a Truth that I should accept.
My first best friend was a compulsive liar. Most of the time I let her think I believed her when she lied, because I recognized the signs of her anxiety and saw the lying and manipulating as her way of dealing with said anxiety (or whatever situation she was trying to control). From my perspective there was little harm in my going along with it, because I’d learned to take a combination of the two “messages” and was never actually misled by her fibs. Compassion kept me from calling her out. If I sensed a lie was an attempt to create an emotional response in me, I simply ignored it (you’re not going to out-manipulate or successfully lie to a child who’s just experienced a divorce, even if they’re only 5 or 6 years old, trust me). This person had a shaky grasp on the world. Her adoptive parents had spoiled her so much she honestly believed that “maybe” meant “yes” because they had never once said no after they said maybe. Naturally (I see now) my little friend trusted her own experience more than my attempts to correct her.
Reading people’s blogs to me is like watching the tell-tale anxiety — or smooth, practiced lack thereof — in someone’s face as they talk, not because I think they’re lying exactly, but because I’m aware of the truth they’ve chosen to highlight on their blog, and I begin reading too far into their writing, combining what I think I know of their life against what I see they’re willing to put online. Sometimes that disconnect is the most poignant part of their blog, but it becomes something I have a hard time reading. We all have a shaky grasp on the world. We all have things we hope don’t get chummed up. Blog intimacy is an illusion. You don’t know that person no matter how many times her emotional and revealing heartwarming posts make you cry. This is a distance we’re ok with in books, but unsure about online.
There is simply more respect and authority for the printed word. Show someone a draft and they’ll feel like they can criticize it to death. Hand the same person the same book printed and they praise it. I wouldn’t trust Joe Pubic or the internet with any writing I really cared about. It takes too much work and is too fragile. It’d be like someone with a high risk pregnancy playing dodgeball.
If my little friend chewed her cuticles too much and bled, she’d squeeze and pick her finger until it she had enough blood to justify running to show an adult. I don’t want a post to feel like that either. That is, I don’t want to take something tiny and make a big fuss out of it just to get a little attention. But that’s exactly what starts to happen when people feel they must post daily.
Not for nothing, during the school year I turn down work because my time is so very precious and tight. I won’t have time to read articles on the internet or other blogs, which is a big part of blogging. The money I’m paying for school, literally, is the time I bought myself, and the priority of these two very short years takes precedence over anything else.
See how I build up pressure on myself just thinking about school, time, and energy? Like in everything, the problem boils down to limited resources. No matter how many legitimate reasons I give.
Looking up at this massive pile of writing (long blog. FAIL!) and see a few rounds of edits, copyediting that are still desperately needed. Cut a truckload of words. Actually, this is more like 4 or 5 separate posts, if you go by topic. Apparently I’m a good procrastinator, if nothing else.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Not everything is for the internet.
My second year of grad school begins next week. Tonight is an orientation reception for the first year students, and I’ll be there as an anti-shyness agent and walking information booth.
I’m totally confident that I can answer their questions about professors, workshops, the colloquium. I’ll know how they feel and who they should talk to, but that’s the extent of my experience.
What I’m learning right now is that second years are way more terrified than first years. Most of us anyway.
The only thing keeping me from freaking out more is freelance work that I’ve been trying to wrap up before school starts. Unshockingly, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. Which reminds me that I’m also trying not to panic about not writing anything much at all, and that viable or timely ideas are going stale in my head. And sometimes I worry about this site, how old and lame it feels, how I should be a good and constant blogger, do the things I know I should do. Or I should flip the switch and not even think about blogging because it’s different and doesn’t serve my purpose. Plus that whole wad-blowing thing is totally true, which is why I’ve never been a daily poster of posts (not everything is for the internet and if I were that type of blogger I would have to have done it years ago).
Whatever happens in the next week, I can’t wait for school to start.
Friday, August 22, 2008
A Convergence of Convergences
mmmmm
McSweeneys is “launching an extravagant new contest: A Convergence of Convergences. Submit your own convergence—an unlikely, striking pair of images, along with a paragraph or three exploring the deeper resonances. The best contributions will be posted on the site, along with responding commentary from Weschler. (For those of you who still aren’t quite clear on this “convergence” concept, it’s kind of like Celebrity Look-Alikes, except instead of Nick Nolte and Gary Busey, it’s a cuneiform tablet and the Chicago city jail, followed by a series of brilliant, spiraling ruminations.”
as if I’ll have time. ya never know.
eReading eWriting eRithmetic
Here’s a sentence that wouldn’t have made much sense to most people a year ago, from Galleycat:
“Last night, the Soft Skull Twitter feed directed readers to Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy‘s five-point plan to revitalize book publishing....”
Richard Nash, the publisher for Soft Skull, totally gets it. I‘ve been following him on twitter ever since hearing him speak at The New School last year on a small press panel. I remember feeling refreshed and impressed with Nash’s point of view regarding the future of publishing in a modern, digital, connected world.
One person asked, “Aren’t you worried about people stealing books if they’re online, like music piracy?”
Nash said, “The publishing industry wishes it had that problem.” I’m paraphrasing, but fairly sure that was the gist. He also said it in his fabulous British accent, so it sounded even more intelligent.
Last week he tweeted, “I can’t wait til we have content we can put here: Free Software Turns the iPhone Into an E-Book Reader.” Oh, I would look forward to that.
[UPDATE: softskull (Richard Nash) just twittered a link to a free PDF of The Wizard of Oz. It’s pretty cool-lookin’.]
Last week I downloaded that app (Stanza) to my iPhone, but ran into the same problem I run into with all e-book/e-reader internet-audio book delivery situations.... a rather crap selection due to copyright limitations and lack of publisher involvement. I’m hoping very much that it’s just the beginning, and that soon I’ll be eating those words.
My fear is that application developers and participating publishers will track participation and make premature assumptions about the habits of the eReading public — since I can’t really tell them, “Look, the books I would have read on your ereader I have already read because they were written forever ago. I’d love to peruse your offerings. Can you maybe organize them a bit better, and offer more than an author and title because all these are super obscure. Oh! And I don’t speak German.”
Indeed, people who don’t read (Steve Jobs) love to talk about The Curse of the eReader and how people don’t read books anymore. Blah Blah fine. And only like 4% of people who start writing books finish writing a book, but wow, there sure are a zillion books out there, so shut up with numbers and start thinking outside the pod. I also barely listen to music anymore, but I’m on my second iPod and buy things to put on it from the iTunes store.
I want a lot of books. I’d really like them all instantly.
I would be really tempted to buy a Kindle if selection didn’t suck.
From one of their bullet points: “More than 150,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.”
150,00 titles sounds like a lot but from where I’m standing it’s all foam, no beer. If publishers and marketers are only interested in selling books to the beach-reading crowd who treat books as disposable wrappers for brain candy, they will have misjudged and under-served the book market on the whole. That — or I’m overestimating people, and no one will read in the future, and all those non-book-loving people will fail to notice that it’s the end of the world until there’s an infographic about it.
How about books not on the NYT BS list? Maybe that consumer-friendly market can subsidize the expansion into more books, other canons, forever, until they’re all there. Who do I have to bribe to get a little free market action around here?
Can I get my reading list for school this fall? No. Jerks. Judging from last year (*and my attempts to buy locally from used book stores including Strand) I’m going to have to buy books through Amazon, which taps into tinybooksellers throughout the U.S. and England, who sell me an inexpensive book that usually costs less than the price of shipping. It’s a modern miracle to do business like this — and I cherish these books — but suddenly, finally, we’re all painfully aware of how expensive and retarded transport is.
The process of obtaining these books strikes me as wonderful and terrible at the same time. It breaks my heart to think of what it costs independent booksellers to pay a human stand there and wrap my little $1.50 book printed 30 years ago, resold countless times. It puts the fear in me. It’s not a sustainable practice. I rather give the sum total to that bookseller, than have most of the money go to shipping (oil), the waste of the cardboard and plastic it came in, and so on.
I know that for me, until there is a way to search and find almost any book, any eReader will feel like a stunted thing, a peripheral device of the most frivolous sort, when it has the potential to be so much more.
I’m just a cranky potential customer with a reading habit, a wallet, and a willingness to try new things.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
For Reals
more cat pictures
This is just beyond dealable. No dealing with this can be done.
As I weaken with end-of-summer freelance and impending school, I am unable to resist the temptations of kitty pr0n.
Just takin’ the edge off, peoples.
Monday, August 18, 2008
You know how smart people can be totally dumb?
That’s pretty much what I’m thinking in regard to the recent ridiculous, wasteful, bogus (in my opinion) study on Birth Control pills and how they might affect women’s choice of mate.
Author Suzanne Reisman has a wicked smart post over at Blogher, and while I’d love to weigh in with my two cents, I don’t need to because she is right on the money.
Most of what you may have read on this subject was written by morons — except Breakup Girl and her amazing power of BS detection, “Feh. I know there’s science in here somewhere. But “lead researchers” should leave the headline-friendly love stuff to superheroes. Especially (but not only) when it’s got the faint whiff of “Women and their krazy hormones! Sheesh!” Ah, thank you Breakup Girl!
Most of the articles I’ve read sound like they were written by people who probably copied off others in biology class. And weren’t copying off the smartest kid in class…
From Reisman’s article:
* * *
More important, what is the point of studies like these? The Feminist Peace Network pointedly notes, “How sad that research like this even gets funding–imagine if those funds were used to come up with explanations for wife-beating or dowry killings. Just saying.” But, people love scientific studies that prove some sort of preconceived notion about how women and men interact, and thus we are likely to continue to be bombarded with bogus science and the breathless news reports that follow for eternity. (Sorry to be so cynical.) In the meantime, no attention is paid to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry abandoned efforts to create more birth control options for men and the latest anti-reproductive rights ploy by the Bush administration, which is currently re-writing Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines to re-classify many forms of birth control as “abortions." (You can take action against this insanity at Progressive Future and/or MoveOn.)
So how can we deal with these bogus science reports? Bitch magazine has an excellent article with tips on how to deconstruct “bunk reporting in five easy steps.” Read it, study the lessons, and become as expert as PJ in debunking crackpot studies.
* * *
For reals, don’t even get me started on the topic of birth control, stupid conservative bogus science, and how shitty or not shitty it can be to be on hormonal birth control. And what ever happened to the birth control pills big pharma was working on for men? They gave it up. It’s better for them to give men Viagra (money money money moooonay monay!) instead of figuring out what nutrional, health, and mental problems are preventing them from being able to function. You’d think something provided by the health care industry would have some sort of relation to your actual health, but you’d be deluding yourself.
Don’t get me started. That path leads only to despair.
Alone - The Epic Season Finale
This week features the grand finale of Breakup Girl’s 28 episode comic “Alone."
*Sniff*
From co-creator Chris Kalb, “This concludes the run of 28 episodes created initially for Lifetime Mobile. But never fear! Breakup Girl should return in new new adventures after Labor Day, albeit with less frequency (or less material weekly) sans the corporate sponsorship. As the BG comics transition from a paid gig back to a labor of love, your comments of encouragement are welcome.”
Who knows what the future holds? Think the Lone Loner and Breakup Girl’s relationship will keep to the work of the Just Friends League, or will their relationship heat up again? Am I asking questions like this because Mike’s been watching old episodes of Batman and the announcer voice has infiltrated my mind? Or is it really because I want BG and LL to get back together?
Til the next comic, Breakup Girl and the Super Bloggers will keep their eyes peeled and the posts coming.
Love, mi
Friday, August 15, 2008
The Ampersand
Daring Fireball hipped me to the newish scene at The Ampersand, celebrating the & in all its manifestations.
As characters go, the curvy ampersand has the most sex appeal, popping up on t-shirt logos and anywhere there’s design for the sake of pretty.
To my knowledge, this is the only typographic symbol to get placed in the hip realm of floral silhouettes, forest animals, and photo-realistic wood grain.
A Simple Bits article (via The Ampersand) details the ways they’ve made use of the character with clever CSS.
It really does seem to belong in the land of the visual, since it doesn’t say “and” in a uniquely meaningful way. I’ve often wondered how the exactly the word and symbol were formed, beyond the Latin “et al.”
The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that this ligature goes back to Pompeiian graffiti, medieval scribes and Anglo-Saxon chroniclers. Hot! So this ribbonesque symbol was drawn by hand, explaining why it wasn’t, um, always hip to be a square block in a typesetter’s case.
I could never draw a nice one by hand, because I’m a really bad draw-er. Mine tend to look like fancy S’s or lazy plus signs. But I like the beat of the word’s rhythm. It totally goes with remembering its hexadecimal and pound thirty-eight which is what I hear in my head when I type the code for & (the semicolon is silent, like an e).
In other news, that’s my third Pompeii hit this week. The first was when the Times reported (as many have for about ten years) that the ruins of Pompeii are in a dangerous state of emergency. A couple days ago, I learned from the genius author and amazing musician Mike Edison that many, many of the meaningful symbols all over that ancient city were depictions of sexy parts (peniseses and ballz and things oh my!) guiding the path to brothels. When the Victorian archeologists came across these, just like the naughty filthy dirty (to their eyes) Greek art, they hid most of it away and sanitized their findings for the masses.
Now I’m learning the history of Graffiti and Pompeii on Answers.com. The article makes it sound like only very G-rated images were used to indicate “Pay to play this-a-way.”
“The graffiti shows a handprint that vaguely resembles a heart, along with a footprint and a number. This is believed to indicate that a brothel was nearby, with the handprint symbolizing payment.”
Somehow I feel that if an article were on Wikipedia, and the authors knew their stuff, there’d be some ... ah ha! yes. Here we are: Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
hmm.
Erotic Art in Pompeii & Herculaneum
nice.
