Blog writing and revision

I just revised my last blog post, Children. You might want to read the new version.

Revising it made me think about some of the disadvantages of blogs. I'd just read an article in the New York Times called "24 Hour News People" by David Carr who has a blog with nytime.com. He was doing some hand-wringing about how blogging has affected the way he writes.

"The speed of conversation is a prt of what is good about [blogs], but then some of the reflectiveness, the ability for careful summation and expression is lost," says a blog-expert Carr interviewed, Clay Sharkey at NYU.

I agree. As much as I try to make these blog-posts reflective and substantive, it's not always easy. Unlike Carr, I don't have people telling me in posts what I should write about. But other aspects of blogging shape the way I write.

Yesterday's post, Children, is a case in point.

I hadn't posted since Saturday, and it was Monday. When you start a blog, you make a kind of uspoken promise to your readers that you will post consistently, close to every day. So even if I have no ideas, I have to find some and write. No writer's block allowed!

Mostly, my writing fits this format. Sometimes I think of a post while doing something else. "I'm writing a blog post," I told Bruce as we sat together after dinner and I realized I was staring out the window. Other times, a word, image, or experience will get me started on a post.

But sometimes, I need time: to let an idea percolate and come together. And blogging doesn't allow for that, really.

So I just revised that last, not-quite-finished, not-quite satisfactory post. Which is one of the advantages of blogging: you can always change what you wrote.