Do you always write for an audience? For ourself, too?
Friday, January 11, 2002
Good to see that Lynn has flipped. The "paper prototyping article" she referred to was found by Raymond at IBM's developerWorks. There are lots of other good materials like this out there, it seems.
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"Do you always use a weblog to write for an audience? Do you also blog for yourself, too?"
Lloyd is gathering the answers of others.
I have another weblog that is editors only to goof off in, to try out new templates, to see if this or that works. I don't use it often, but it's handy to have when the time comes.
I did have yet another weblog that I thought I would do much more work-related writing in with the idea of writing, over time, larger, finished pieces, but my use of it faded pretty quickly.
Over the years I have tried keeping journals or writing more regularly with various levels of very short lived and very low-level success. I haven't done it for several years. I still have many different kinds of journals, books, and spiral bound notebooks that have only been used about a quarter.
I have had more success with drawing journals, but not with sketchbooks. Instead, I liked to have 8 1/2 x 11 reams of paper on hand to draw on the front and back. After awhile I'd take a stack of them, make the stack neat, clamp it to a board, drill holes down the side, and then sew the pages together into a book.
The audience is key. Even an audience of one. But an audience of one, even, can be too easy to forget and let go. That's why so often people pick up the phone and reply, "Oh, I've been meaning to call you."
But having to write for at least that audience of one is more compelling when there is the potential for others to peek in on the action. There's the need to have something there, and the need to look good.
And when the writer is linking to others who are provided with, essentially, linkbacks (seen in stats/referers) then the peeking back is even more likely, especially if the person you're linking to has a topic in common with you.
I'm delighted that by having these motivations I have written regularly using a tool that has helped me, like the way I sewed my own books of drawings, to create, store, and regather material to accumulate into a larger "piece."
Even though they aren't great pieces of writing, and could use lots drafting to really tie the parts together, bring a finish and deeper meaning, and address a broader audience, I am happy to be playing with a model and tool that has helped me produce Post-Kauai
122801-010602, and It Took Me Ten Days To Tell This Story.
I always wanted to be a writer, and am maybe finding one way to become one.
Later, about 9:40pm...
Another thing about the writing. I often wondered how many peekers are getting the full story. That is, if I come back her four or five times a day and write how many people are actually getting that flow; how many are getting the changes? Probably not enough.
So I've thought about writing somewhere else, getting it all together, and them dumping it here, whole. I've only done that a few times. Sometimes with Radio 7. A few other times times I've written in a Story (for example /CA/stories/storyReader$22) so as to hide the process, and then when I was satisfied I'd paste it in the current day's post.
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I'm pretty sure I want to try out Radio 8.0 right away.
Later, about 9:50pm...
I've downloaded and have been playing with Radio 8. It's very familiar, and quite different. I haven't figured out how to use it to write to this weblog. What happened was a new weblog was created for me on the install: http://radio.weblogs.com/0100175/. It's really worth a look. I still don't understand it all. Well, I understand it, it just doesn't fit the paradigm I'm used to: I'm accustomed to having my weblog hosted at interativeu.berkeley.edu, not by Userland, and that's where I really want my work to go, to Berkeley, not elsewhere. So, until I can figure out how to use Radio 8 to edit this weblog, I'm not likely to put too much content into 0100175.
What is amazing is to watch the flurry of updates on weblogs.com, especially the new Radio sites. Really cool.
And the idea of Radio, of broadcasting, which is why for the time being I called my new Radiolog "Chris Ashley's Big Mouth Radio Broadcast, really puts me in mind of http://interactiveu.berkeley.edu:8000/CA/2001/04/20 when I talked about blogging as radio broadcasting, and how Lloyd plays the role of a DJ, intercepting, combining, remixing, and spinning back content. Radio is such an apt name for the phenomenon I am observing tonight of so many individuals writing, sharing, putting it out there, linking to others, noting parallels and differernces.
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Here's me with an ear infection; fortunately, thanks to antibiotics and a lot of sleep, except for the cottony, mono hearing I no longer feel this way. Thanks for asking, Lloyd.
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