On Blogging

So, in many respects I feel like I have done this before. And I don’t mean in the sense that I tried doing a fiction blog before, using WordPress. Instead, what I remember is, when I was studying abroad in England, I kept a LiveJournal, updating on my exploits and travels. In many respects, a blog is just the new face of LiveJournaling. So what’s different? There were comments, categories and sections and things if I remember right… What changed that made blogging explode? I can think of two main things, one technological and one more subtle.

• RSS! Instead of you having to go to all the things you want to read, they come to you. I still open 15 pages every day to read all of my comics online – I may have to see if I can RSS all of them. Having updates come to you I think is a huge contributor to the success of blogs, and of why they are being used as a type for news libraries and everything.
• Links. Now, likely people linked things in their LiveJournals, and looking back at mine it looks like I even did. But beyond linking, there’s embedding – again, the idea of having instant access to media or information. It seems that there is more of a push to not only mention things but to link to them. Perhaps Wikis made us think this way, about linking all of the important pieces of a discussion, so that our readers could find out more; linking audio and video for entertainment or for expanding an argument. Increasing the speed at which the Internet can give you information – but also creating something of content filters and context for what we read on the Internet, something desperately necessary in the middle of the infinite online space.

Until someone comes up with something more efficient and that provides better context, blogs are here to stay. At the current rate of change, that might be this fall; however, I could see it being longer. And no, I’m not linking my LiveJournal. I might take the travelogue and move it here, however. I’m also not linking my fiction blog – I was starting to blog a novel, and that really seems like it is not the right process for that. Going back and editing previous posts, for instance, is something that readers would not follow. Instead, I think that blogging short stories is the way to go – practice the craft, get feedback, and save the novels for publication.