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William Gibson on Blogging
The Ape With No Name writes "With Pattern Recognition now out, Gibson talks to the Guardian about blogging, which ones he's looking at and why he may have to quit blogging himself. He's quoted as saying '...if I'm ever going to write another book, I'm going to have to quit doing my blog as I have a hunch it interferes with the ecology of being a novelist.'"
Could going back to the stream of consciousness style actually screw you up when trying to write a novel??
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
At first I considered a blog as somekind of diary people would keep online. The main reason people would read blogs was inspired by some kind of voyeurism. Nowadays most blogs are just a view on todays (or yesterdays) news. People nowadays read blogs to read the headlines and possibly different opinions .
;-)
I've once started a blog myself. Didn't last too long. The process of starting on including installing etc. was more fun to me than writing in it every day
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I take it you don't like a lot of original speculative literature then.
Things like A Clockwork Orange, some of Kurt Vonnegut's stuff (Cat's Cradle comes to mind), a good chunk of Tolkein, all with invented words must be just horrid for you.
Ah well, somebody has to buy the mainstream stuff, right?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
He mentioned this before at least at the book signing in Birmingham if not before then too.
He said it's difficult because the 'blog provides an outlet for your thoughts and material, it doesn't have chance to accumulate.
So he doesn't 'blog when he is writing, that gives him chance to fill a store of thought enough to fill a book.
Don't blame me - this
One can blog just to get stuff out to the public, and get a bit of a response. Gibson said during a reading that he felt that blogging was too fun; it didn't feel like work. Even interracting to two or three dozen people in a blog struck him as a time sink.
Neil Gaiman is writing very conversationally, responding to questions. (In verifying the address, I noticed he has written about this topic already.)
Elsewhere, Warren Ellis & Bruce Sterling are just commenting on stuff that comes up as they research their upcoming work. Cory Doctorow (and co.) & Charlie Stross just have more varied interests than Gibson, I guess. And hell, the way they're working on a new story is in a blog.
Um. I feel weird that I'm pointing out so many examples. I read all these regularly, though.
I partially agree with this. There's a lot of really good books out there, and going for the "classics" is a good way to find good books fast.
In general I find SF books more interesting than most books though. I just read a note by Philip K Dick were he pretty much nailed it with the comment that most stories are more about style than content. This makes for interesting reading, but not much thinking.
If I want interesting ideas I'd rather pick up a SF book I'm recommended than a typical classic. And often that is because since the book is a "classic" the provocative ideas in it are not really all that provocative any longer. Swift, Voltaire and such classical authors spring to mind. While "Candide" is a good book and was (at the time) provocative I find the ideas now are more interesting from a historical perspective than as ideas.
There is another aspect to blogging that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion. Blogs can be a good way to see what it is like to pursue something you are considering. That is why I keep my blog. When I figured out what I want ed to study for graduate school, I went out and tried to find some first person accounts of what it is like to become a Nurse Anesthetist. I bet most of you have not even heard of one. Anyway, it was difficult at best, to hook up with one, let alone find out how school was for them. So When I started school, I started a blog to let people know what anesthesia school was like.
Anyway, I guess I am trying to say that not all blogs are just random thoughts about how someones school lunch smelled like a nursing home.
Although I keep what you might call a blog on my own computer, it's more a private diary or journal than a blog. I kept a diary on paper for 10 years and have moved over to this system for numerous reasons. I think that blogs take away the integrity of a diary. A good diarist doesn't write for an audience, only for himself. Samuel Pepys' diaries have worth because he writes without the bias you would expect in a blog, where the writer may have an agenda or an axe to grind. I wouldn't look to blogs for facts and nor would I trawl through one looking for a stranger's opinion when I'm more likely to find the quality and breadth of opinion in a forum. Blogs seem to me to be there for egotists who feel they have an audience when they post to a webpage - often enough the quality of the writing isn't of a good standard. Things my girlfriend and I have argued about is an exception however. Well written and very funny.
The most important thing about blogging IMO is that it allows the average person to easily be a producer on the net instead of just a passive consumer (ala TV). Weblogs also allow for the publication of very obscure and specific content that would not exist otherwise (such as a weblog about various things to wget and curl).
Sure, there is a lot of crap in blogs, but everyone has something worthwhile to say once in a while. There are a lot of very smart people who write weblogs.
Those who think blogging is pretentious should read the following entry on Dave Winer's Scripting News.
Those in power always resist something new that empowers the masses in what was formerly their exclusive domain (such as news organizations suppressing the weblogs of reporters, and elitist intellectuals who think expressing opinion should be their privilege only).
Beware. If you have spent the last few years reading Gibson considering him a "treasure" to the english language, then attempting to digest "The Sound and the Fury" could cause you physical harm. One of the greatest books written, this is not light reading. Could sprain your brain right before it expands your horizons. For those of us who enjoy brain sprain through literature, this is near the pinnacle.
"As I Lay Dying," also by Faulkner is one of my favorite books.
"Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler is another brilliant read (kind of along the lines of Orwell's 1984) set in 1930s Soviet Union.
bad sig...no donut.