Academic Writing vs. Blog Writing

I have realised I have been trained into bad habits by University. Now don't get me wrong - obviously you do need to prepare for writing an article, even if it's just dashing off a vague idea you had the other day while cleaning out the guinea pig cage. But I realised this morning that I had been obsessing over my writing in a way that was actually harming it in terms of it being created for a blog. Instead of just writing the damn things, I've been very carefully researching sources, trying to find images that compliment the content and working out how to make sure I cover every point about the subject that can possibly be covered. And that right there is the problem. In writing a piece for academia, the most important thing is to close off avenues of debate in the reader. Leaving points open or unexplored encourages your audience (i.e. your marking tutor) to wonder why you haven't covered that angle, and that means you lose marks. Writing academically, you have to cover all the bases and close off the possibility of valid criticism cropping up. Whereas with a blog, it's more important to open up debate, leave questions raised but unexplored. One of my first year assignments, I was marked down heavily for asking a question and then proposing an answer. When blogging, asking questions (especially in the title) is a great way of psychologically engaging a reader. In other words, university encourages a style of writing that runs contrary to the way we converse and hold dialogue in everyday life. Right now I'm speaking and you're forming a counter-opinion. And that's a good thing. It makes you more likely to leave a comment, and also to share it on social media to get your friends to comment as well. The other thing is that a blog tends to be an idea presented in an exploratory sense rather than a finished one - blogging encourages a dialogue of "This is what I think, what do you think?" So, what do you think?

Keeping up Appearances

Half-finished ideas for long protracted rants float lazily across the re-awakening frontal lobes of this poor sod, a blogger of advancing years and advancing paranoia about the world into which I stumble. Yes, I'm typing again. You see, I'd hoped this whole 'banks' thing would blow over by the time I left university, but it looks like the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are - would you believe it - getting poorer. You, of course, already knew this. So for today, let's just write this of as me trying to get back into the swing of things after allowing myself time off from writing for good behaviour.

Still Alive

So I'm pretty lazy. I mean, right now there are many things to comment on that are of personal interest to me, and by extension the people who feign interest in what I have to say. There's the whole News International phone hacking collapse, and the UK teetering on the brink of a known industrial lobbyist taking over the two main lodestones of British political sway, namely the tabloids and Sky TV. There's the ongoing patent war between Apple and everyone, in which they just lost their first major battle and now face losing their US (and probably UK) market share. Which I find hilarious because I work in IT and see on a daily basis how often Macs don't 'just work.' But really, it just seems to be a case at the moment of not having enough time at the moment to push my agenda on the world. Maybe this is why News International have been able to get so far in my absence, or maybe it's mid-day and I need to take the special pills that stop me thinking I'm more powerful than Rupert Murdoch (nobody is more powerful than Rupert Murdoch). I moved house you see. I know, tremendously inconvenient but then along with graduation comes the gradual bleeding of real life once more into my cozy existence, and suddenly I no longer have periods where I SHOULD be working but aren't, I just have moments when I'm either working or slipping further into David Cameron's pocket. So for the blog, this translates into me probably not updating much for the next ten days. There again, I might update more often, I just don't know. This is just to warn you that there will be gaps ahead.

Clean for One Week

Events in meatspace have conspired, as they so often do, to deprive my usual haunt of internet for one week. One week in which I got a surprising amount of FYP done, the missus completed Mass Effect and we discovered a new, cheap source of noodles. But yes, the FYP. The bane of our collective existences, THAT is the source of my current tension and forthcoming apology. Yes that's right, I'm apologising for the apology I am about to launch into. Sorry. I mentioned free writing as a warm up to writing last time, and it is my intention to, unfortunately, use this blog over the next few weeks as a way to get my brain into gear and producing me that nice fat 2:1 I deserve. My biggest issue right now is my brain not wanting to write - there are so many bright and shiny alternatives to doing so that, like a petulant child, it would rather watch the xbox, or or play about on Facebook, or pretty much anything except work on the capstone to the last three years. The issue is though, a lot of things accumulate over a week-long internet blackout. I haven't even looked at my emails yet, mostly because there are a bunch of stag related ones in my staff account. So there is currently a war going on in my attention span between the FYP and the internet. In other words, everything's back to normal.

Blodge

Blog noun / verb; blogged, blog·ging. 1. n. a web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites. 2. v. to maintain or add new entries to a blog.

---

Drudge noun / verb; drudged, drudg·ing. 1. n. a person who does menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work. 2. n. a person who works in a routine, unimaginative way. 3. v. to perform menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work.

---

Blodge noun / verb; blodged, blodg·ing. 1. n. a web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own dull, distasteful or unimaginitive experiences, observations, opinions, etc. 2. v. to menially maintain or add unimaginative and/or dull entries to a blog.

---

In other words no, I don't have any spectacular ideas for today, so it's rambling i'm afraid. There is a concept in creative writing called 'Free Writing,' where you just write about literally whatever's on your mind, and keep going without stopping or self editing for five minutes. Or your career, if you're Julie Burchill. At the end of this, you slap whatever you have into shape, adding the correct grammar, references and spelling to it and then trim it down to just the good ideas (again, unless you're Julie Burchill). The thing is, this is a good start for a piece of writing, but only after it's been through the mill of post-production editing and polishing. So many people now seem to see this as the primary means of production of writing: dashing off whatever comes off the top of their heads; Youtube comments, Facebook statuses, tweets, and more. As Kevin Smith said, the internet has given everyone a voice, and apparently everyone wants to use that voice to bitch about movies. Or bitch about people bitching about movies. Or bitch about... well, you get the impression. All web 2.0 has really brought us is thousands upon thousands of voices screaming into the void, hoping someone will do something about it. You know, someone other than ourselves. And the hope from our perspective, the blodgers, is that someone will sort it out for us. We're only shouting because we want something done without having to get off our arses and do it ourselves, and the increased option of feedback gives us at least the illusion that this might happen. So as a consequence, the quality of the feedback decreases by being spread too thin - if a company has 20 hard copy letters a year, they can actually give more than five minutes time to crafting a reply. But if there's a couple of thousand forum posts, or comments, or @tweets, they're more likely to fire off a quick and categorised self-help sheet that covers the vague area of concern. Ultimately it comes down to a problem with interactivity in media. Open yourself up to feedback and people expect that feedback to mean something. But it has to mean something for EVERYONE feeding back, and in the case of large corporations that means feeding back to every minor point raised, since the feedback is now so much easier to leave. See? Karl Pilkington was right. You leave your mouth going long enough and the brain starts working.

Now we have Adwords

A brief note of semiparental responsibility pulls at my heartstrings - the kind of parental responsibility that would occur looking at a toddler who's holding a bag of flour, and hasn't thrown it yet, but you know they're probably going to, and it's going to make a mess, and you'll have to apologise to the woman he's aiming it at... You see Google sent me free Adwords money, so if you've been misled here through an Ad, I can only apologise. Really, I do. I tried not to bother you while you were just innocently stalking people on Facebook, or shopping for cats on Ebay or just looking for porn like everyone else. Really, I'm sorry to have troubled you. I even tried to make the ad weird enough that nobody would follow it, but here you are. Anyway, enjoy the scenery and rants. Having been given this free money gives me an annoying responsibility to actually put up content over the next month, so we'll see how this all works out. And I'm sorry about the flour. It'll wash out. I promise.