Category: metablogging
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A Rededication
Though I like to write things like this less and less, I have to take a moment to say something about this blog itself. And it’s this: While I don’t have the time or will I once did when I was publishing nearly every day of the work week, I intend to start taking this…
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I’ve Not Written in Months
Technically it’s just weeks right now, but before–when I first drafted this–it really was months. It was, and remains, that a strange confluence of inconvenient facts keep me from regularly flexing my muscle in this space. I could go into the details, but I would rather say simply that they are far more prosaic than…
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Some Days
Some days I have nothing planned for this site and start to worry about it far too much. In worrying about it far too much, almost every idea I have feels forced. The ideas feels forced because (1) they are a little forced, and (2) this pointless stress tends to make me hyper-aware of any…
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What is Dispatches?
This is one of those things I’ve thought I probably should write for a long time but never got to actually doing. Until now. Dispatches, for those who don’t know, is a semi-regular feature on this site. It consists, essentially, of a few sentences that laments that our (fictional) reporter hasn’t been in touch in…
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Tidbits
From the “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass” box: Sometimes you try to write something and come up completely empty. Having had had a number of interesting, strange, and outright unusable ideas, you’ve found nothing that could become a coherent set of sentences that seemed to say anything valuable. So instead, readers will have to…
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But What Is a Blog? & My Answer
Source: topgold Aside from having been described by Jerry Seinfeld as a terribly ugly word (which it is), “blog” is a hard concept to pin down. Of course the word’s evolution from the original meaning of “web log” would suggest that they’re necessarily linear expressions of a set of idea, thoughts, and goals. A diary…
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State of the Blog, December 2007
If you’ve ever come to the site before, you’ll probably notice that it looks different. To lessen the shock, here’s an introduction to what’s changed and is new. (Actually, those two sentences are no more than a thin facade to excuse me from feeling bad that this is an otherwise meaningless and self-indulgent post.) In…
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‘Bloggers,’ ‘Writers,’ and Media
Spend much time online, and you’re sure to find at least a few people telling you that reading and writing on the internet is like nothing you’ve ever done. They’ll tell you that readers don’t, well, read on the internet. Instead they skim and look for lists with bullet points. Oh, and pictures. They love…
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On Being an Egomaniac
I can’t avoid the feeling that writing on this blog is an incredibly egoistic activity. I want to tell you about myself. About my opinions. About a story I dreamt up. All of it’s about me. Now I can, and maybe should, concede that this is the nature of writing. That you can fundamentally only…
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Charting the Blogosphere
The idea of quantifying or charting writing–or any form of art for that matter–strikes most people as at best odd, probably unreasonable, and likely sterile and academic in the worst ways. To Dead Poets Society fans who remember the–literal–tearing apart of an essay that endeavored to do just this, how presumptuous such an effort can…