Clearly, my comments on blogging exempted the present company! And I thought I was more nuanced!
Reading and thinking about Jeff’s and Vidge’s comments, I wanted to identify the point where our views diverged. I think Vidge had grasped it with her comment on reaction and creation. Yes, links can highlight bits of trivia or news, and cause readers to salivate creative juices. That is a good thing. News analysis works much the same way; the immediacy of the blog is great for these purposes. Perhaps a more important point for an author is that Jeff could post his ideas on Sony quickly while he remained excited about it. That is reactive. This type of may be best described as a mediator/facilitator role.
On further reflection, I am not sure if ever there is a time when creation is purely de novo. Surely writers, artists, and muses react and draw inspiration from the world around them. A formative experience must have contributed to even the longest held ideas and thoughts about some particular matter. It may not be direct, but the creativity residing within is nevertheless bent by events from without.
Being a deeply held thought, one must also think that, if the writer had done his thinking properly, there is probably an intricate web of connections he has made, unique to himself. The expression of this web is that creative act. And if time is used wisely, he can shape that web into not just a tool for persuasion but a work of art. That applies to the writer as artist. For one with fewer talents, he (and by that I mean “I”) can reach a state between utility and art, that of a well-crafted work.
The form the work will take depends on what is said; a link requires less work, but aquires no less worth, than a longer editorial spurred by some bit of news. Sometimes, an even longer, deeper analysis or commentary, could be improved with polishing. The pitfall one must avoid is molding too much. For some of my longer pieces, I’ve certainly seen a dramatic change in their structure. Mostly, the edits were trims, and what I find most improved with time is that the piece is husked, and the kernel of the argument becomes ever more exposed.
I find that I tend to write too much, with points scattered over the wordscape. Each article could spawn several offspring, but should all these disparate thoughts remain in the one, the article becomes not pregnant with meaning but rife with confusion. Perhaps I am an overly opinionated reader, and my need for some time to polish some of my text stems from the illogical mess I lay onto the tiny PDA screen or blogger window. And the time it took for inspiration to seize me and for me to post this spans one hour; take this as evidence for Jeff’s point!
Post a Comment