“When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know,
what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.” James Baldwin
Hi, how are you? —Hurray!— The count just reached two hundred blog essays here on my exciting new blog, as of last week’s post, Ornery Old Man.
You might ask me, why blog? Besides venting my ornery spleen?
A) For fun.
B) For “Saving the world,” as we would say when expounding our views in the bar.
C) For sharing “humour and heart.” Of which, as Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee says in his letters section, “Nuff said.”
What, you want more?
For shooting my mouth off…
…There’s was a joke in Readers Digest. A teacher asks a small boy why he’s late. He looks up at her and replies, “With three sisters and one bathroom I’d like to see you get to school on time!” And me, as a small boy with four older brothers,“I’d like to see you get a word in edgewise.” Now I can reason things out slowly and tell myself my prose is worth listening to.
For the discipline of regular posting…
…like the disciplined “way,” or “do” (doe) of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, (invented by a Samurai) or the do of the empty hand, karate-do. I sometimes think of a guy in Silicon Valley, customers falling away, all his employees laid off, who kept his software going, single handed, to keep faith with his remaining customers. I too, by making regular posts, keep faith with my few fans.
Hypothetically, if I have no fans, then I am like the scientist who, after an apocalypse, keeps a remote research station operating, keeping huge radio dishes active, seeking intelligent whispers from the stars that he may never share. But I do have readers: As recently as last week I got another subscriber—in fact, I have about as many subscribers as for my old blog, even though “the “blogosphere” has become something of a ghost town,” as it’s much easier for writers to do short outbursts on social media. (Footnote)
I remember my professor in Leisure Services saying, to me and another student in his office, that our class wasn’t doing discussions, we were doing outbursts, because we were used to sports where we act without second guessing ourselves. Not like an honest academic. As Noble Prize winner Bertrand Russell said, “If you are certain then you are certainly wrong.” Somewhere between athletes and academics are students seeking knowledge. I would often think of students as I composed, starting July 2020, on this new blog.
My old blog, weekly, had no word limit. This new one, every five days, has a self-imposed limit of 900 words. (like a commercial magazine article) The old one ran for ten years, exactly 500 posts. That’s a lot of practise. But as a musician said, “Practise makes perfect only if it’s perfect practise.” In my imperfect writing, I had no editor! All I could do was keep making pass after pass over my pages, gradually perceiving ways to improve. (And sometimes, like a student painter, copying the prose masters)
But my fairy godmother finally visited: Since spring, I have gained two support groups, where we bring our manuscripts and criticize each other’s work. Each group meets fortnightly. Which means as many as half my pieces get feedback. But not the other half. Still, I bet you can’t tell which posts I had help with, —hurray!
Not one person in either support group ever writes a stereotypical schoolboy essay.
IMPORTANT NOTE Children write “essays” to prove something, complete with a confident topic sentence. And they follow a child’s formula: “There are three foods I like, A,B,C, in conclusion, there are three foods I like.” Bertrand would never be so boring. Nor will you ever read such “school writing” in any magazine, sports article or movie review.
Blogging helps me learn. As web essayist Paul Graham notes, you start on fresh blank paper not to declare what you already know, but to discover. You write to explore because you don’t know what you think. He says even “talking it over” with someone is no substitute for having new ideas while writing. Like when I was a theatre reviewer, and I discovered for myself the utter truth of that classic reviewer’s reply, after the final curtain falls: “The play? I won’t know what I think until I go home and write my review.” Which gives me the new idea that a disinterested judge is following “the way” of having the mental clarity of a Japanese monk.
To save you scrolling back up and pondering, I will gift you a tidy ending line:
In conclusion, as simple as A,B,C, essays are what I like.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In the wires,
October
2023
Words of the day for thinking in English:
Expound, Utter, Disinterested
For Students wanting optional reading:
~On Paul Graham’s web site, (link) his fourth listed essay from the top, The Need to Read, is referenced in todays post. Also he has a few pieces on writing essays, including Persuade XOR Discover, and The List of N Things.
~The quote “the “blogosphere” has become something of a ghost town” is from John Scalzi, as he explains in my short post Lucky Blog in April 2023 (link)
Motivation for you:
~Stevey is a computer nerd at a major corporation. He has a site, Stevey’s Drunken Blog-Rants where, with a trusty bottle of wine, he composes an amusing, complete essay at a single sitting… He urges You Should Write Blogs and explains why… and why he’s not ornery about not knowing stuff. (Link)
For Writer’s block and imposter syndrome, and overall encouragement, if you don’t mind a “talking head,” then here is a nice short piece of Seth Godin speaking to a friend.
