Set Down Your Coffee Cup

I mean it. Whatever you’re drinking, swallow, and set it down. ~stevenf’s The LJ Times, random LiveJournal excerpts presented in the style of a serious newspaper, has the potential to be dangerous to your nasal passages otherwise.

The OmniWeb feature that inspired it, the ability to view-source, edit it, and see your changes, sounds wonderful, and I don’t know why other browsers haven’t stolen it.

And as fun as it is to make fun of LJ-style writing, I still think it’s a wonderful thing. There is exactly one way to become a good writer: write. Not everyone writing “omg: Kevin’s sooooo hot!!!!” will turn out to be a good writer, but every one of them will end up a better writer than they were when they started…

Actually I think blogging is damaging my writing skills, or at least allowing them to atrophy.

Seriously though, just writing will help you improve your writing a bit, editing your work will help you improve dramatically. It is the editing process where you really learn what does and doesn’t work, and become cognizant of your voice as a tool that you can use with intention.

Blogging discourages editing. I occasionally go back and edit old entries, but no one will ever see those except a few lost souls Google sends my way.

Seems like there should be a way (for a certain type of blogging) to productively re-shape the metaphor; change the blog’s role into a wiki-style recent updates page that points into an actual web of contextualized content.

As Hemingway said “there is no such thing as good writing, there is only good re-writing”…