My last project (and only other adventure in blogging) I conceived as a series of postcards of my life abroad in Switzerland, but that got complicated by the fact that I was sharing it with friends and family each of whom constitutes individually a different audience in my mind.
Because I was living in a monastic community, I was automatically talking about religion with people whom I normally don't share that with in our friendships. I also kept spurting about all sorts of things I normally keep locked up in most contexts..
Like everyone, each of my friends shares different parts of my life, I have a different voice, am a different person to each of them, really. Writing for everyone - and then random strangers, too, who began reading it - hundreds of them - was a bit wrenching.
I also ran naively into privacy issues, when the Swiss and French schooled me on cultural differences regarding privacy.. Many of them when they found out I was putting stuff online told me to keep them out of it.
So I felt inhibited, and sometimes a bit paranoid. I posted off the cuff, and then wondered if I exposed too much or annoyed anyone by inflicting my crap on them, or else exposed my friends in ways they would resent.
Whenever I posted stuff of an "existential" nature, especially when I did it in a raw and rambling fashion, I felt some angst.
It felt self indulgent.. But I wanted to do it.. I liked it.. But wanted to do it without annoying my friends. So I canned the old blog, and started this one, meant to be much more focused and disciplined. I wanted to get things into writing that I'd been thinking about and struggling over, whether anyone read it or not.
The potential audience would be a foil for me getting the work done. And I would do it in a more concise manner.
This blog is the result.
The thing is, I'm still rent with a bit of angst. I don't know where to begin, there's so much, and when I do write I've been doing it in a haphazard and jerky fashion.
Posts here have generally been written in less than an hour, most often in under 20 or 30 minutes. I write something, post it.. And then re-read it and immediately see a dozen errors or things I should of added, and so do a 5 minute re-write and re-post. An hour later, I come back, notice more errors, fix them and re-post it again.
Very disciplined process, and perfectly suited to annoy anyone rss'ing this.
I've started writing a dozen different essays, though, and have notes (both dictated and written, as well as an accumulated archive of source materials & media to post) for many more. I need to start writing with discipline, here.
Take for example the last post: there are multiple typos in it, and at least one major factual error (Mosul is in northern Iraq - I was also thinking of Basra when I wrote that line on Iraqi cities, and the word "southern" just slipped in there..)
I leave them as they are, a testament to my editorial competence and my talent comme un ecrivan.
I'll try to keep this project coherent and not too absurd or sententious. I'll try to develop certain themes and lines of logic between my posts, to quilt them in a way that makes sense.
Even though my aim isn't to attract a lot of intention, I do want to be readable and interesting to anyone who does compliment me by following this.
Comments and criticism, always gratefully & sincerely accepted.
I'm posting this without a proofread as a Lenten mortification for you my dear audience. I have your spiritual well being in mind.
After Lent, I will proof read in earnest, I promise. I have to get back to my self flagellation now, though.
(I fibbed, I can't help myself. One slapdash revision. There.)
Cheers.
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