What do y'all think? Do blogging and online journaling sap our nation's literary resources, or are they a boon to them? I know my thoughts in this medium tend to be less thought-through than something I'm preparing for publication, but then it's been a long time since I've had anything published, and this is a good outlet for me to express my opinions, etc.
I am working on some fiction right now, something ambitious, but I'm working on it very slowly. There's no doubt that I spend time blogging when I could be working on more "writerly" writing. Still, I wonder if publishing is a thing of the past, and we can all be our own best editors nowadays. The trick is attracting an audience and keeping it when dealing with online writing. Publishers are looking for a mass audience, so it's definitely a different type of writing, even if the principles are more or less the same.
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2 comments:
I think they're definitely a boon. Thinking that they sap it only makes sense if you assume that the only people that blog are people that already write formally. Blogging lowers the barrier to entry to writing and it helps develop new writers that never would have taken the plunge had it not been so easy... and fashionable!
I agree that blogging lowers the barrier to entry, and that it is fun and interesting for people who would otherwise be non-writers. For that reason, blogging is good. I also wonder if this format dilutes the literary talent of the country or the world, rather than focusing it and channeling it into better writing. How do writers emerge from the blogosphere to become true literary writers? Will there be a literary star born from it? Or will it always be somewhat of a less artistic form of writing? Maybe what I need to try to do is establish some criteria of my own for "good blog writing" or research some good blog writers out there. I'll think some more about this and post soon.
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