By Daniel Rigney
Blogging can be a valuable discipline for practicing writers. It can serve as both a learning tool and an unlearning tool. Here are a few things I’m trying to unlearn in my own writing here. Your self-advice may vary, of course, depending on the unique nature of your blog and voice.
Avoid Excessive Ranting and Sarcasm:
“I respect right-wing gasbag Rush Limbaugh as I would respect any porky pillhead on his fourth marriage.”
Avoid Excessive Ego:
“We thinking people are a small but critically important segment of the American electorate.”
“My bestselling book with Knopf is now available in Italian and Korean translation.”
Avoid Premature Submission:
“As Earnest Hemingbird wrote or said, all first drafs are crap.”
[The best thing about blogging is that there's no editor. The worst thing is that there's no editor.]*
Avoid Overpublishing:
“As I noted in a previous blog post submitted ten minutes ago ….”
Avoid Wordiness (Not "Overly Excessive Wordiness"):
“In the introduction to this communication, I enumerated fifteen things to remember when, in the course of writing events – if we think of writing as a kind of speaking or talking, but through the medium of ink or pixels or sometimes graphite rather than soundwaves -- we seek to avoid overloquacity …. (etc., etc., etc.)”
Translation: Here are some things to remember when you’re trying to write simply and conversationally.
Avoid Oversharing:
“I wish I had never posted this ‘Text to Self’ bit. Now people will think I’m a complete doofus.”
*For more on blogging in the Editor-Free World, see this previous post from Open Salon's dunniteowl.
http://open.salon.com/blog/danagram
Blogging can be a valuable discipline for practicing writers. It can serve as both a learning tool and an unlearning tool. Here are a few things I’m trying to unlearn in my own writing here. Your self-advice may vary, of course, depending on the unique nature of your blog and voice.
Avoid Excessive Ranting and Sarcasm:
“I respect right-wing gasbag Rush Limbaugh as I would respect any porky pillhead on his fourth marriage.”
Avoid Excessive Ego:
“We thinking people are a small but critically important segment of the American electorate.”
“My bestselling book with Knopf is now available in Italian and Korean translation.”
Avoid Premature Submission:
“As Earnest Hemingbird wrote or said, all first drafs are crap.”
[The best thing about blogging is that there's no editor. The worst thing is that there's no editor.]*
Avoid Overpublishing:
“As I noted in a previous blog post submitted ten minutes ago ….”
Avoid Wordiness (Not "Overly Excessive Wordiness"):
“In the introduction to this communication, I enumerated fifteen things to remember when, in the course of writing events – if we think of writing as a kind of speaking or talking, but through the medium of ink or pixels or sometimes graphite rather than soundwaves -- we seek to avoid overloquacity …. (etc., etc., etc.)”
Translation: Here are some things to remember when you’re trying to write simply and conversationally.
Avoid Oversharing:
“I wish I had never posted this ‘Text to Self’ bit. Now people will think I’m a complete doofus.”
*For more on blogging in the Editor-Free World, see this previous post from Open Salon's dunniteowl.
http://open.salon.com/blog/danagram
No comments:
Post a Comment