A podcast with my old friends Beth Lock and John Farr, about Mac stuff, and about being a writer, and sundry. Back around the millennium, there was a group of people writing about Macs and computers and life and philosophy, those two were essential to it, and I was in the periphery, back when MacCreator.com was active (I wrote for other Mac sites too).
John Farr makes an interesting observation/question about writing: For a writer who writes a blog, does the immediateness and instant gratification of that process take away the maturing and seasoning of some material which might otherwise have become a really good article or book?
Personally I doubt it. I don't think the kind of writer who has the discipline and depth to write a good book will also be the kind of person to "prematurely ejaculate" it all onto a blog's pages. Au contraire, perhaps bits that gets written on a blog might become the genesis of a book which might otherwise not have happened? And for sure, tons and tons of writing on blogs would not have happened otherwise. And some of that is good, and none of it is so bad it should not exist.
It takes tremendous discipline and stick-to-itivity to write a book. The whole thing has to hold together. It takes no discipline or stick-to-itivity at all to write a blog. Just see how well I'm doing. Seriously, I don't have any of those things at all, which is why a blog is perfect for me. I can write for five minutes about soup, forget all about it, and then write for three minutes about space travel. And none of it has to be very good, because the reader does not pay, and can skip any post that does not interest him.
10 blog posts in a day! You are going mental!
ReplyDeleteEither that or you've discovered a way to monetise this.
I'm just feeling *really* good today. I'd like to find out why, so I can replicate it. :)
ReplyDeleteYou need to use that "anchoring" technique they teach us in NLP. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit afraid of NLP, the foremost proponent of it of my acquaintance is rather over-analytical.
ReplyDeleteWell, more than anything else, NLP is about trademarking well known human psychological phenomena. The NLP concept "anchoring" is better known as creating associations.
ReplyDeleteSo, for example, when feeling good, you would want to do something out of ordinary to recall that feeling by. NLP suggest this is something in your body: a specific gesture, or perhaps a tap on a specific spot on your hand. Anything you do not already associate with something else.
Later, to recall the feeling you repeat the association. NLP calls this "firing the anchor".
Does this work? Generally speaking yes. It is a well known psychological phenomenon. But in practise it is not always that simple. For one, actively executing such associations is a habit you would have to learn.
Secondly, all feelings are significant. When you feel less than good, your subconsciousness is trying to tell you something. Disregard it and you get the feeling over and over. A much better strategy then is to listen to what your subconsciousness has to say, than to try to zap yourself to some other place.
But other than that, using external stimuli to cause change in your perception is a fascinating field.
"the reader does not pay, and can skip any post that does not interest him."
ReplyDeleteI wish those who sometimes complain about my comments would remember it applies too. This is not Turkmenistan! :-)
(For info, the President-for-life of Turkmenistan had written a book of his thoughts, philosophy and poems, and everybody in the country was forced to buy and read the book. The guy even stated that if you read it three times while facing the sunset, you were sure to go to Allah's heaven. Say, oh Allah, can you confirm this? Well, folks, sounds like we're getting a "no comment" from the Supreme being...)
Stick-to-it-ive-ness is something many bloggists seem to have a great deal of ...
ReplyDeleteIn small spurts. It would take a *very* great reward for me to write 8 hours in one stretch.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's your assumption. Who says that people who accomplish the writing of whole books have to do it in eight-hour stretches? Maybe they write it all in small spurts? If that's the case, then what they have that is different from average bloggists isn't so much the capacity to write for longer single uninterrupted periods of time, as the ability to look from a distance at a conglomerated whole of various small parts and stitch them together into a well-coordinated whole. Bloggists are willing to just let the parts lie there, one after another, without trying to really relate them.
ReplyDeleteIn my time in book publishing, I found out that every author is different, and every one of his or her methods is different. If I were required to come up with one monicker to help struggling writers to produce more effectively, I could only say this: figure out your own method and always refine it. Ellen Gilchrist works late at night after she's had drinks in the afternoon and then sobered up (and if she hasn't drunk, so the theory goes, she wouldn't be able to write); John Gardner wrote first thing in the morning; D.H.Lawrence famously fondled himself; Tom Stoppard writes in great fits and spurts and, when lacking inspiration, turns to translating Molnar or another Eastern European; Conrad wrote a page a day like clockwork; Eugene O'Neil needed solitude, careful advance planning, and his wife to translate his meticulous plans into typescript; V. S. Pritchett goes upstairs (his bedroom is on the second floor, his office on the third) at nine and comes down for a punctual noontime lunch with his wife; Stephen Ambrose employed (literally: paid them a salary according to amount of product) family members to write chapters, or even short paragraphs, and paid by the line or word; David Brinkley uses note-cards which he writes up at the library from research, strings them together on a clothes-line, rearranging until he gets the right order, and then types them almost word-for-word into a wordprocessor, making linkages as necessary; Dickens constructed a gazebo house with mirrors which enabled him to dramatically act to himself the parts of all his many characters out loud; and Red Smith just recommends that you sit and stare at a blank page until drops of blood appear on your forehead.
Great post, final identity!
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree, discovering your idiosyncratic way of writing, and then feeding that, works miracles!