In a recent article in The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan has eloquently described how he blogs. [1] Reading this article is a chance to see into the mind of a well-established and well published writer who only later discovered blogging, yet took to blogging with great enthusiasm.
Sullivan sees blogs as a way of “writing out loud.” Because of this, blog writing is always “more accident prone, less formal, more alive.” Because bloggers have less opportunities to collect and process their thoughts, those who write blogs often end up writing more about themselves, often unintentionally. “You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts.”
In his experience as a blogger, Sullivan noticed that blogging “rewarded a colloquial, unfinished tone.” Compare blogging with the writing he did for many traditional outlets, such as the new Republic:
I often chafed, as most writers do, at the endless delays, revisions, office politics, editorial fights and last-minute cuts for space that dead-tree publishing entails. Blogging–even to an audience of a few hundred in the early days–was intoxicatingly free in comparison. Like taking a narcotic.
Sullivan argues that blogging rewards brevity and immediacy. “No one wants to read a 9,000 word treatise on-line.” Blogging is thus “a broadcast, not a publication.” Despite the shorter length, blogging offers a greater depth of writing thanks to the hyperlink, which offers readers the ability to tap into primary material instantly. The hyperlinks offers greater forms of interconnectivity that people could ever have previously imagined “The more you link, the more others will link to you, and more traffic and readers you will get.”
Not all bloggers crank out substantial amounts of original writing. Instead, many of them serve as aggregators of other posts, with dozens of links with “minimalist opinion topspin.” In this category, Sullivan puts Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit [2]and Duncan Black at Eschaton [3]. Into the category of the original “bloggers,” Sullivan puts Karl Kraus and Montaigne.
How does one keep up as a blogger?
As in the blogosphere has expanded beyond anyone’s capacity to absorb it, I’ve needed an assistant and interns to scour the web for links and stories and photographs to respond to and think about. It’s a difficult balance, between your own interests and sessions, and the knowledge, insight and wit of others–but can an immensely rich one. There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, making samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music. He is both artist and producer–and the beat always goes on.
What kind of music is it? Sullivan concludes that blogging is akin to jazz. It will not replace the carefully written articles that preceded (and continue alongside) blogging, the “classical” pieces of writing one finds in paper magazines. Rather, blogging “is a kind of music that needs to be engaged rather than merely absorbed.”
Just as there are many styles of jazz, there are many styles of blogging. Sullivan’s article got me thinking. I break more than a few of his “rules,” but I often blog differently because I set out to have a different type of blog than Sullivan (whose writing and blogging I’ve long admired). Andrew Sullivan’s article got me thinking and I know that will get me blogging about how I blog.
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