I feel a little like an underachiever. I heard an interview today with Andrew Sullivan, the first person to blog back in like 1999 or 2000. Neat interview. Until I heard that (are you sitting down? Good) he makes 250 to 300 posts per week!
Huh?
Yep, that’s what the man said: 250 to 300 a week. He said he has to blog every 20 minutes. I just got one question: who has that much to talk about? And doesn’t the man have a life to live outside of his monitor? Where did he find time to do an interview?
And then I look at my stats and see where I haven ‘t posted in two whole days. And I think I went for five days before that with my brain lock (which kinda settled in again after that post. I’m getting old, I guess).
But let’s put this in perspective here. When I related this to my daughter and her mom, they both said basically the same thing: he has no life. And, listening to the interview, I have to agree. I mean, to him, it seems that the only writing he sees merit in is blogging. He likes being right there “at the edge of talking,” as he termed it. Nice thought, that blogging is the closest you can come to talking when you’re writing. In principle, I agree with that assessment. Except…I don’t want to carry on a conversation with my writing. I want to entertain. I want to tell stories. I am blogging to add to that, in some sense, and to document, to an extent at least, my journey from where I am now to that day when I can say I’ve been published (and beyond. I won’t just end this blog there).
To me, his attitude toward writing harks back to my post about how technology is changing how we write. If I remember the interview right, Mr. Sullivan talked of writing without worrying about an editor (why would you want to do that? They’re there to help you improve your piece), and of its immediacy. And yet, he couldn’t remember what his first blog post was because he’s written so many since then. In fact, he said that he can’t remember most of his posts because he has to write so many.
I don’t want to write so much that I can’t remember what I’ve written. Sure, some of that crap I wrote as a teenage is forgettable, but the object lessons I learned in writing those things are still with me (namely, don’t try to do rip-offs of stuff you’re reading lol). So, in a way, I feel sorry for Mr. Sullivan. To his credit, though, he admitted that he’d love to be able to take a year off to read and just absorb stuff rather than always producing. He seems to believe that the blog is bigger than him, though, and yet can’t exist without him, and maybe he has a point. As far as it goes. The bottom line, though, if you ask me, is that he likes it too much to quit. Actually, I think he admitted that, as well.
So what’s my point? Well, nothing really, I suppose. Maybe I just wanted to see what it would be like to publish and fluff post. Or maybe I’m just a little amazed that someone could like blogging so much they’d dedicate that much of their time to it. I can’t conceive of liking it that much.
But, it’s writing. And as this blog makes plain (I hope), I like writing. It’s my dream to be a published, full-time writer.
I just don’t want to do it Mr. Sullivan’s way. When I want to go up to the edge of talking, I’ll pick up a phone. I’m old-fashioned that way.
Later,
Gil
The Book of Writing 