December 13, 2008
Is This a Blog?
An Existential Crisis
Last week, Arianna Huffington appeared on The Daily Show to promote a book on blogging, authored by the staff of her own massively successful Huffington Post. A self-confessed "evangelist" for blogging, she encouraged any and all watching to start blogging, and not to worry about anything being perfect.
With his usual knack for hitting the nail on the head, Stewart questioned this appraoch, asking if there wasn't a good reason that "dreck" didn't get pubished. He suggested that there some ideas weren't meant to be written down, and that this was why he was hesitant to blog. Huffington countered that this was not true, and that one should think of blogs as a "first draft." This statement has been haunting me all week.
If capitalism is any judge, Huffington is right. She has built an empire on blogging, so she should know. Then again, most of her bloggers are professional journalists as far as I can tell. Their "first drafts" are the result of near-daily practice. Mere mortals who blog as a hobby will probably need a few more drafts to reach anything that should be seen by the public at large.
And the idea that you don't need to be perfect...I've been reading this one more and more on career blogs lately and it realy rubs me the wrong way. I'm not promoting obsessive perfectionism here, since that can be a one-way ticket to the loony bin. Living a sane life requires prioritization, and this means deciding what deserves your "A" game and what doesn't.
Unfortunately, if my teaching experience has taught me one thing, it's that most people don't even know what an "A" game (or paper, or presentation, or work in general) looks like. They have no abstract concept of excellence, and it's my excruciatingly painful job to tell them that on a regular basis. Most of them are skeptical and act as though what I'm asking for (namely, the aforementioned best effort) is damned near impossible. To them, a first draft means spewing out the first thing that comes into their heads, usually with no spell checking whatsoever. The second draft, which most of them see as the final draft, is acheived by using the computer's spell-checker. This is why I'm not 100% behind encouraging people to write without shame or fear. I've seen the results of such permissiveness, and it's not pretty.
Real editing is, as any writer knows, a much more involved process--something akin to distillation. It means cutting away the chaff (but boy, do my students bristle when I cross things out) and rewording what's left into its most essential form. A really well-written piece may need innumerable rounds of editing to reach its perfect, or at least A+, state. Because of this, I think Huffington's encouragement is a bit rash, and shouldn't be embraced without caution. I've seen too much bad writing already.
Hence my own personal crisis about blogging. I agree that there's value to having a non-judgemental space to try out ideas, and I certainly don't claim that this is my best writing ever. I use this forum to try out ideas--but still, not all ideas make the cut. It's a great way to challenge myself to write every day, when possible, but some days I don't have any brilliant insights to offer. And before I post something, I give it more than just a once-over. I edit a few times, and make an effort to proofread and spellcheck. Maybe that makes me a heretic in blog culture, and maybe I shouldn't call this a blog. My own perfectionism and aversion to self-indulgence have caused me to struggle with the whole idea. Still, I have things I'd like to say, and I'll be damned if everyone else gets to talk and I don't.
But I remain opposed to any notion that you should just blog the first thing that comes into your head and slap it down on the page. That seems like a recipe for bad writing and an abuse of the friendly and useful forum created by blog culture. If you're going to use the net to communicate, you still need to make sure you're doing it as effectively as possible. And you shouldn't diss trying for perfection unless you've proven that you can at least try for the A. Even Picasso went through formal art school before revolutionizing painting. So I'll modify Huffinton's invitation a bit. Blog away. Blog about whatever you want. Blog (as she said) your passion. And no, it doesn't have to be perfect. But please, please, please, for the sake of your readers, at least try to make it the best it can be.
