Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Weblogging

Ephemerally yours

Sometimes I read something that reaches out of the page and touches me between the eyes; the touch vibrates throughout my body as if I were a wire strung between pegs, played by someone with infinitesimally deft skill.

Jeff Ward:

In the winter of 1989 I started experimenting with infrared flash photography. The success I had with it made me stop driving much farther than the local bars. It’s hard for me to date daylight photographs taken after that— they were few and far between. When moving some boxes around today, I stumbled on a box of 3 ½ inch floppies. I haven’t used them in years. I looked and saw that they were the letters that changed everything— private letters that changed my life when they became public…

Categories
Weblogging

Well, that was a short good-bye

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

A scant two weeks ago I bid you all a tearful farewell, and now here I am again, in your face, on your blogrolls (I hope, still), and cluttering up weblogs. com.

Wait, though! Before you dismiss me as yet another weblogging addict (holding up cardboard sign saying ‘Links for the hungry! Will blog for food!’), hear me out. Give me a chance. I have excellent reasons for restarting:

Reason 1:

PorridgeBoy must be held somewhat accountable, with his dastardly plot to get me to weblog again. I had to give him something to pull that terrible photo of me, and he wasn’t interested in sex. Well, with me that is. (Maybe it was the photo — I really have to get one of those glamour pics…)

Reason 2:

Then there was Dave Winer’s Why We Blog. There are very few things that could have interested me in returning to weblogging more than reading the following, yesterday:

From there, I want to start an outline about what a weblog is, because there’s more to say. Maybe it’ll be a three-column table. In column 1, a topic. For example: Fact-checking. In the second column, how centralized journalism does it; and in the third column, how it works in the weblog world. That way, if someone understands how fact-checking works in the print world, they have a basis for understanding how it works when done in the open.

I’m sorry, but this was more than a flesh and blood woman can take. I mean really — did anyone think I would let something like this slide?

(I wonder if Dave did this deliberately?)

Reason 3

Josh Trevino had a bet with Meryl Yourish over at i330 about how long I would be gone, and I thought I wouldn’t disappoint either of them since they seemed to miss me so much.

Hi dears! I’m back! XXOOXXX

Reason 4

My friends, and this time without any preface of ‘weblogging’. I’ve had an extremely patient group of friends in the last month as I’ve literally bounced over every wall, and twice off the ceiling.

In particular, it was a phone call with a friend tonight that made me realize that the weblog wasn’t the root of my problems, and keeping it, or not, wasn’t going to make these problems go away. All I was doing was giving up something I really enjoy, and not gaining any peace in return.

(There’s a long, complex, and difficult story attached to this, which would only bore all of you. So it’s going unsaid.)

Yes, I do need to find a life, and today I went hiking in the woods and I didn’t think about weblogging, at all. (Of course, I was very sure there was a bear uncomfortably close and I was hiking by myself, and getting a pretty good adrenaline rush from the whole thing — but that’s a story for another day.)

And, yes, I do need to spend less time weblogging and more time with my professional writing (particularly since I have a tough RDF book deadline). But as Dorothea stated:

Blog however you want, whenever you want, as often or as seldom as you want. Use as much or as little of the technology as you care to. Adhere to common blogging formats or not, as you choose. Watch the big bloggers or not; pay attention to bloglomerations or not. If you feel you need permission to do any of these things, you’ve got mine, no questions asked, not least because I don’t believe you need it.

Fucking good advice. So I took it.

Reason 5

Sex.

Categories
Political

So far left…

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Doc Searls has me pegged when he says that I’m a Lefty, though I agree with him that being libertarian is the only way to go with the Net. (Or better yet, anarchy on the Net, all the way.)

How far left am I? I’m so far left that I’d come full circle and run into Glenn Reynolds’ back if all those warbloggers kissing Glenn’s butt weren’t in the way.

Categories
Writing

On Writing Professionally

There’s some form of mystic associated with writing professionally that, in some ways, I don’t understand.

It doesn’t exist with, say, web development — there are scores of web page designers and developers who would be appalled at having to do what they do as a hobby, as a job, day in and day out. In addition, there are those who garden, cook, drive, sew and care for children who wouldn’t even consider doing the same for a buck.

But writing, well, writing professionally somehow imbues the written word with a higher degree of importance than the word that’s given freely. Even if the written word is included in the biggest jumble of disorganized crap that ever existed on any planet in the universe, and the freely given word is the epitome of elegance, grace, and clarity.

Perhaps the reason for this mystic is that if one is paid for the word, one is somehow supposed to be more proficient with the use of the word. I write this word — apple — and I am not paid for it. Therefore, the value of –apple — is worth less than the word — Apple — as long as it is followed by OS X and I’ve convinced some editor somewhere that it is worthy of inclusion within their magazine, eZine, book, or other forms of publication.

It is true that when one is paid for an act, one improves over time. Based on this we can conclude that when we pay for an action, we should be able to expect more from that action. This works for sex — why not writing?

The act of writing professionally. The publication process.

As an example of the publication process, take a look at the following sentence:

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer.

One publication prefers that writers not use the familiar, so can the professional writer remove all familiar references?

Okay, how’s this:

It is accepted practice to flibit the gidget and then flummer the dummer.

Another publication prefers the familiar form, and also prefers witty repartee with the reader. Can the professional writer please adjust accordingly?

Okay, how’s this:

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer, and you’ll be kicking ass at that point.

A third publication hastens to add that words such as “ass” might be offensive to some readers. Please edit this remark.

Okay. Is the following acceptable:

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer, and you’ll be much happier with the results.

There’s another publication. This one likes to have notes, sidebars, and annotations.

Okay. Then how the hell is this:

My recommendation (being aware that I have enormous experience with this) would be that you flibit the gidbet (see www.gidbet.com for more info) and then flummer the dummer, (see sidebar A1), and you’ll be happier with the results (happier: increased sense of well being).

Are these examples of writing somehow worth more than the unpaid version of the same, such as one could find at a weblog?

Weblog version:

To hell with the gidbet, who cares about the flummer, go get a beer, and screw it all until tomorrow.

I think not.

(Legal Disclaimer: The publications referred to in this document are entirely fictional. Any similarity to an existing publication is purely coincidental.)

Categories
Weblogging

So long, and thanks for all the posts

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. 

What a marvelous party this has been, and what wonderful people I’ve met, but it’s time, and past, for me to move on. This posting will be Burningbird’s last.

I wasn’t sure how to close the weblog down. Should I just quit abruptly? Spelling out “GOOD-BYE” with no hint of why I’m leaving? However, as tempting as it was to play woman of mystery, I’ve never been one for brevity and I wasn’t about to change my style here at the end.

I started this weblog for two reasons: writing and community. Twisting time into a moebius strip and coming full circle, these are also the reasons why I’m closing it down.

If you’ve been reading Burningbird for some time, then you know I love to write. To compliment this, I also love reading and I’ve met some potentially great writers among those webloggers I’ve been honored to call “friend”.

Potentially great writers. I say this not to insult the writer but because I’m finding that the characteristics of weblogging that allow us to meet great writers are also the characteristics that prevents the writers from showing their full potential in their weblogs.

It’s so seductively easy to write to a weblog. Open a tool, type in some words, push a button and “Hey now”, you’re a published writer. Yet writing is more than putting words out for others to read – it’s also a process of thinking about what you want to write, researching your subject, working with the words, writing and re-writing the same phrase over and over again. It’s effort that takes time – lots of time – and involves change. And, above all, it’s a very personal process.

The very nature of weblogging is that we post regularly, we don’t pull the postings, and we do only minor edits. If we pull postings we leave broken links from other weblogs, or comments that are left orphaned. If we edit, we’re breaking trust with those who’ve commented on the original writing. Weblogging is writing that’s been externalized.

And once the words are out and the writing is finished, no matter how terrific the post is, it’s slowly pushed down a page and hidden among other postings and blogrolls and blogstickers and other graphics until it eventually falls off the bottom of the page, never to surface again unless some strange person puts a bizarre request into Google that leads to one of our archives.

Truly great writing must be allowed to persist through time and if there’s one characteristic common to all weblogs, it’s impermanence.

There’s no reason why the weblogger can’t write for other publications – many do. I do. However, I’m finding that, for me personally, my weblog has become a creative relief valve, something that’s not as positive as it may sound.

Writing is as much a discipline and an overcoming of inertia as it is a product of creativity and skill – you need a build-up of creative energies to start a work and see it through to the end. Since I started weblogging, I’ve found it difficult to focus on my books and my articles, and it shows. In the last year I may have written more than at any other time in my life, but I have the least to show for my effort. No articles, and only one book finished.

What a twistie – to continue writing I must stop writing.

Stop writing to the weblog. So much harder than it sounds because through weblogging I’ve met incredible people from all corners of the world. Not writing to the weblog means I’m also leaving this very special community.

And this leads to another twistie for you – to become part of a community I must leave a community.

In the last six months, I’ve kept myself wrapped in amber. Closed, static, sitting in a chair with computer on my lap, connected to the real world through your eyes, hearing your song, living in your dreams. I’ve managed to avoid dealing with the world and issues in my life that need resolving by folding myself into the community of wonderful people I’ve met here.

My weblog has become more than my avatar, it’s become me.

I need to walk among forest paths with thoughts other than “I must remember to post this”. I need to meet people and look into their eyes, and to laugh and hear something other than the echo of my own laughter back. And I must stop using this weblog as a surrogate for life and the only way I can do this is to quit cold turkey. Walk away, and not look back.

Walking away – this is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because I’ve come to like and respect, and even love, the members of my virtual neighborhood. You.

I have no regrets leaving the artificial world of weblogging – the Daypop and Blogdex ratings, the arguments of “webloggers as journalists”, the occasional and unthinking nastiness, the obsession with outlines and links and Google and quizzes and memes of the minute.

But I do regret leaving you.

So long my friends. And thanks for all the posts.