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My Difficulties with Blogging

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Blogging isn’t easy.

The biggest challenge, I believe, is the decide precisely how much information to put into each post.

There’s the temptation to treat a blog post like any other sort of writing – e.g. long, carefully written, painstakingly proofread, etc. There’s a lot of benefit to that, since people appreciate quality.

But if one establishes an expectation of excellent content-  in oneself – it becomes nigh on impossible to actually produce it (apart from intrinsic motivation; but there are so many other things to do, it falls down the list). And that situation is worse than no content at all.

I believe the best solution is to create lower quality (shorter) posts. I suppose you could call it the “Scoble Method” – posts of around 300 words each, very often. I wouldn’t advise going to that extreme, however.

Of course, you still need high quality content. But it should be rarer, and shored up by “blurbs” – working thoughts and observations that eventually turn into longer, theory-articulation posts.

I’m going to try that. It will give me an opportunity to write more – which I need to do – and experiment with different styles in a non-graded situation.

And, just to make sure my blog posts aren’t too short, I’ve begun using Twitter.

So, once again: high hopes. Let’s see if I can manage the necessary dedication in face of so many other tasks.

Blogging with Word 2007

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Microsoft released Office 2007 today. I highly recommend it – due to the “Fluent” ribbon-based interface, Office 2007 is excellent. A real pleasure to use.

Word 2007, among other things, allows you to seamlessly post to blogs. It’s what I’m using now – and intend to use for the foreseeable future.

It allows you to use the same tool for all writing purposes. And, frankly, Word 2007 is leagues better than any other blogging tool on the market. Consider spell-check: not only is Word 2007 excellent at spell-checking words, it watches for grammar and words incorrect based on context (e.g. loose vs. lose). It also has fantastic image manipulation abilities, and uploads them automatically so there’s no need to deal with finicky FTP programs and URLs.

For example, take a look at some of the image effects applied to a thumbnail of my resume:

Nice!

Blogging and Good Intentions

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It seems that I’ve left this blog to idle by, despite my good intentions.

There’s a trap, you see, in blogging. ‘Blogging’ these days is intimidating: every post is archived for eternity. It makes it easy to fall into a seductive fallacy; that each post must be perfect, or at least good.

That’s true, in some situations. But in most – and in my case in particular – that assumption is both incorrect and damaging. The point is not to produce perfect posts that reverberate with meaning. Instead, it’s to transcribe my mind. Immortalize my thoughts in words – and make them electronic, searchable, and open. The interest and attention of other people will be appreciated, but it’s ancillary to creating in the first place.

My posts will get better as time goes on. Simple experience, accompanied by an eye for improvement, will polish and expand my posts. Of course, that’s one of the real benefits in writing for an audience, instead of taking notes. It forces you to write to communicate. After all, that is what life is about.