Why do I spend weeks on a blog post writing and editing it until I publish it?
The answer’s simple: it’s fun to spend time making something as good as I can make it before I show it to the world. And in a world where deadlines are the norm, taking the time to craft something until I’m happy with it is a pleasure. Because it matters to me that this is about creating something I can be proud of, and presenting that to the world in a way that is good.
The Japanese distinguish between two kinds of quality: atarimae hinshitsu – the idea that things work as they should, and miryokuteki hinshitsu – aesthetic quality on top of atarimae hinshitsu. What I want to do is to write posts that don’t just communicate, but communicate beautifully.
There’s a difference between writing for yourself and writing for your reader, one that’s as clear as night and day.
It’s the difference between what the very smart Kathy Sierra describes as a company that kicks ass, versus a company that helps its users kick ass.
In one, you write to satisfy yourself. In the other, you write to satisfy your reader.
In one, you read your words with your eyes. In the other, you read your words with your reader’s eyes.
In one, you write staggeringly works of heartbreaking genius, and you don’t ever edit dammit because it’s all so mind-numbingly breathtakingly good. In the other, you slay your babies ruthlessly if they don’t serve your reader.
If you’re writing in service of your ego (this blog), anything goes and your ego’s free to write checks your body can’t cash. But that kind of writing is entirely different from writing in service of your reader (my magazine writing day job), where only what’s 100% useful for her gets printed.
As a technology writer with an overinflated opinion of himself, I have to be especially careful not to indulge in verbiage just to stroke my own ego while pushing my dear reader’s head below the heady waters of information overload just one more time because she really needs to know that digital camera sensors only record in black and white, color is added with a overlying color filter, the most common of which is a Bayer filter.
Someone asked me why I love writing, and I couldn’t answer.
Why do some people like blueberry pie, a jazz solo or the smell of rain in the evenings? You can find a thousand reasons why you fall in love, but there’s only one real reason: you fall in love because you fall in love.
Warning: The post below assumes you want to get better at blogging. If you’re blogging just for fun (hell, I am), this rant is not for you. It also contains snarky arrogance, so don’t read it if you’re not prepared to admit how wrong you are and how right I am about everything. Namaste.
Forget about sure-fire tips to wild blogging success, there are really only two secrets to be a successful blogger and I’ve found them:
1. Write well.
2. Or be a cute and nubile girl who blogs lots of photos of herself.
To everyone else who says you don’t need to write well to be a good blogger: that’s bloody stupid (cute and nubile girl photo-bloggers excluded). Blogging is a written medium and it is read. To say you don’t need to write well to create good reading is like saying you don’t have to cook well to make a good meal. To be good at your art invariably demands that you be good at your craft.
And this is art. Not Art with a capital ‘A’ that involves a lot of what-the-fuck moments, feigned understanding and pompous exclusion. But art because when it’s done well, it involves creativity, thought, and hopefully adds to the world of the person who’s reading it. Not unconsidered word vomit.
Web 2.0 Doesn’t Kill Good Writing
But Alvin, this is blogging! It’s not stodgy old literature or dusty cobwebbed print journalism. It’s Web 2.0 now, gramps, so suck it up and deal.
Yesterday, a friend of mine read an article I wrote, and said the writing in the article read like the way I spoke. It sounds like a duh thing to say, but to me, it’s the highest compliment possible, because for me, it’s the hardest thing to do.
It takes me a lot of effort to make my writing sound as natural as possible without sounding like a PR drone, to remove as many layers between myself and my reader as I can with as authentic a voice as I can muster. To say things not in the way I think I should say them, but in the way I do say them.
A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn’t. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or believe you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.