it is easy to just write and stick it up there and somehow because of its immediacy it can be thoughtless - a bit too unconsidered. When you blog for example there is no period of waiting and going back to redraft it -it is live straightaway. In a way this is good get things out and make space for other ideas - I do go back in though and edit later and sometimes use this blog to record a quick thought that I can return to later - I will for example return and re-write this - this does feel a bit like cheating? perhaps - At the moment I am confident that no-one is reading it and so it doesn't matter I suppose if you have a following you need to be more considered - You can write a draft and save it rather than publish it - maybe I should do this.
Blogs and time
Another issue for me is time - especially writing as a fictional character (http://sylvia-menorca.blogspot.com/) - I have had gaps when I haven't had time to write entries and have felt the need to explain them in the plot - I like this way of writing in that I have approached as an improvised - kind of random method - sitting down picking up the story and just writing - it's quite liberating - and so far I am quite pleased with it. But it does mean that as a writer you are not in control of part of the structure - it is time based - time recorded if it is two weeks since your last entry it is two weeks - there it is - you can't change it - you could if you needed / wanted to log on every day create an entry and then go back in and write at a more leisurely pace and consider each entry - but that would be time consuming.
The other issue is tine for the reader = The blog always starts in the present - so we in some ways it is like reading backwards - This is difficult with out careful plotting from a narrative point of view - I would like to try this one time - for now I am not considering this and just writing - As a reader I did find that it made the Twiller (http://twitter.com/#!/mrichtel)- impossible to read - I did scroll back to the beginning and read from there - but it was several pages- and annoying - Now it is bury deep in the blog and takes some scrolling to reach - I suppose one way is to make the navigation as easy as possible with the titles for each entry -
Writing for my site - I became very bogged down with the look of the site and also felt uncomfortable wiring about me - so sought refuge in the visual design - I couldn't think who would read this - finally I thought about sending out details to get people to read my work - so the idea was to place me and my writing in context - my background - where I was from - literally in terms of geography - I used google maps - and in terms of my interests - my work - my family -
In terms of the way I use the web - I use social book marking as a way of organising my bookmarks / links and as a way of sharing them with others and finding recommendations - A good way to waste an extraordinary amount of time is to look up links in delicious - anyway - this is definitely a current web trend to use different depositories for your content and link them via a central hub - your site and this works well - so video content on vimeo, photos in a fllickr album - writing in a blog and link it all together -
Also I wanted the idea of streams of writing - flowing in parallel and the notion of dipping in one and another and the direction your thoughts and therefore writing is flowing - again placing me in context of what I read and look at.
It does however all get lost in a sea of stuff and how to drive traffic to the site is an issue - I found few sites that I liked and was more drawn towards artists / designers sites like - http://www.wemadethis.co.uk - http://www.juliemyers.org.uk/flora.data/ - because the web is a visual medium.
I wanted the nostalgia of the old penguin books and the concept of travel - escapism going somewhere when we read - all fairly obvious stuff really - but I think this does fit with my writing -
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