I apologize for not posting in a while, but my thesis on Wallce Irwin's The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum has been eating up all my time. Now as I finish up the finishing touches and the bibliography, the gears in my head are turning and getting my back in blog writing mode. And this transition itself is the inspiration for this post; there are more blog writers than every but how many of them would actually consider themselves writers?
Of course writing a 30 page literature thesis for a capstone class in college is much different than writing an in depth blog post. A thesis (or any kind of scholarly writing) is researched, analytical, and trying to make a point about what you are writing about. Writing a (good) blog post is typically well researched, approaches the topic in an analytical... wait a second. How different are they really?
Okay, all kidding aside, how similar are the two? With hundreds of millions of blogs, many of which being credible sources for news and information, blogs have reached a state of acceptance and legitimacy. Writing for college classes or academic publication requires a more objective, personally distanced type of writing, while blogs can be more opinion based. Despite the difference in indented audience, length, and form, the two types of writing do both require a substantial amount of intelligent thinking, knowledge or research, development of thoughts and points, etc.
But how many bloggers would consider themselves writers in the same way that someone like myself who is a Literature/Creative Writing major would? I write to make points in my essays, and I write for my own pleasure. Bloggers who have no formal education or background in writing have the same habits, but why not cross the line from blogger to writer? Would bloggers still write if there was no blogosphere?
It's a matter of how you consider your writing habits, and how passionate you are about your writing, and of course, if you started writing before you started blogging.
What about you? Do you consider yourself a writer or a blogger or somewhere in between?
I saw recently that Technorati indexes 71 million blogs! That's a lot of people writing.
ReplyDeleteI think you will always have a couple of schools of thought on the "writer" vs blogger. People who have a love of writing will probably write things other than blogs--either they journal or they are working on books, poems, stories, or freelance articles. I work with a slew of "bloggers" at my company who really could care less if they wrote a word but do so because it makes business sense. I can't imagine them writing anything because they purely LOVE writing and maybe therein lies the difference? That goes back to your thought: "Would bloggers still write if there was no blogosphere?"
I think most would not.
That said, I think that it would be folly if our education systems didn't begin to realize the incredible emphasis that we should be placing on writing, on critical thinking and on organizing thought. Blogs are a key part of how we as a society are gathering information. If it's not blogs, it is on Facebook notes, it's in reviews (Yelp, Amazon, etc), and in so many other places. Having solid enough writing skills to be able to write a great blog will be ever more important moving forward.
Blogging successfully takes a few key things (besides passion about the subject):
1. A healthy dose of ego (to self-promote)
2. Decent enough spelling and grammar. If I come across a blog full of slang or misspellings I may not take them seriously.
3. The ability to deliver information in a concise, coherent and organized way.
A lot of bloggers just don't have that unfortunately. But I would imagine that most serious writers probably do.