Blogging: Kids with Crayons

“Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.”
Gertrude Stein

Blogging: Kids with Crayons

How cool would it be if your favorite authors were bloggers? Imagine Mark Twain describing golf as a good walk ruined. What did Charles Dickens have for breakfast? Did Ben Franklin fret over inventing bifocals?

Of course, they’d never blog. Twain had to do over 500 re-writes of Tom Sawyer. Stephen King writes a draft and tosses it in the drawer for a month, to be read later with fresh eyes. Those writers had editors and publishers to navigate the onerous process of getting work out there. Steinbeck had movie deals on his books before he wrote them!

Our style today is very hip-hop. We sit for twenty minutes and dash off some deep and heady thoughts and hit publish. We know that eighty-percent of life is simply showing up. Here I am! Look at me. Look at what I did.

Firmly entrenched in the post-modern art movement, blogging is writing improv. I am improving this piece right now. Let me riff a few words for you, maybe do a funny accent. Top the whole thing off with someone else’s good quote.

I’m not knocking blogging really. It is what it is. I really don’t want to go old school on writing. To blog “old school” I’d write fifty pieces and save them to be let go one at a time after re-reading and editing and cleaning up; maybe get someone to proof it.

I’m ready for the next art movement. What ever comes next, I am ready to try. Mixed-media would be cool but that has been done. Writing a piece without using the letter “i” would be cool, but that has been done too!

Someone, please start a new idea. We need to freshen up the place a little.

What new approach to writing would you like to see?