Re:Reasons to blog even if nobody ever reads it
by _delirium on Monday November 15, 2010 @03:25PM
(#1907707)
I've definitely found this helps for developing ideas. I think what first prodded me into doing it was realizing that much of my interesting thinking was coming in making long posts on forums (Slashdot, HN, various other places). Nothing wrong with that really; discussion catalyzes thinking, and "writing a reply to a comment" has less activation energy than "writing an essay".
But I eventually realized that my writing output had this weird gap. On the one hand, I had 6+ page academic papers, all official and published and whatever and listed on my publications page. On the other hand, I had literally tens of thousands of comments scattered across the internet, one to a few paragraphs each, with no real way of pointing to them or even finding a comment again myself. Writing blog posts fills a nice gap. They can be somewhat longer and digress from the immediate conversation that spawned the ideas, and I have something to point to in the future (and find myself).
The other thing I do now is keep a text file of comments I've posted that seem worth finding again (as opposed to ephemeral discussion), with the URL of my comment and some notes on what else I might want to say on that. Has only sort of worked out so far, because like any "list of things I might want to do someday" they mostly don't get expanded into blog posts, but it feels like a step up in organization.
But I eventually realized that my writing output had this weird gap. On the one hand, I had 6+ page academic papers, all official and published and whatever and listed on my publications page. On the other hand, I had literally tens of thousands of comments scattered across the internet, one to a few paragraphs each, with no real way of pointing to them or even finding a comment again myself. Writing blog posts fills a nice gap. They can be somewhat longer and digress from the immediate conversation that spawned the ideas, and I have something to point to in the future (and find myself).
The other thing I do now is keep a text file of comments I've posted that seem worth finding again (as opposed to ephemeral discussion), with the URL of my comment and some notes on what else I might want to say on that. Has only sort of worked out so far, because like any "list of things I might want to do someday" they mostly don't get expanded into blog posts, but it feels like a step up in organization.