My present priorities in CD:
- (1) Pseudonymity
- (2) Expression of my thoughts and opinions on various matters
- (3) Tailoring my writing to an audience (what audience? Invisible, unknown, silent <- this is why this point is ranked lowest)
The ordering of (1) over (2) is why this blog is primarily reactive for now - in my posts the reader will find many references to other blogs discussing current issues as well as a lot of quotes from and hyperlinks to various reading materials. What the reader will hardly find at present, beyond the initial few entries, is any valiant attempt to begin topics of discussion close to my heart that will be new in the blogosphere. I'm not quite capturing enough eyeballs for me to think it worth my time in terms of opportunity cost for other life activities - serious social/political writing is an endeavour of blood, sweat, toil and tears, for me. Pretty high toll.
The ordering of (2) over (3) is only because as said previously, I really have no idea at all who reads this and who has expectations of this.
Happily, (1) and (3) do not conflict. I know my writing style is very characteristic of me (this is why some of my friends, having passed by this blog, can do a double take and go, "This? Eh? Hmm!" and ask me in private if this is mine) and this fact doesn't trouble me. Consider how deep a blog persona goes and perhaps you will begin to see why being known to my friends does not bother me in the least.
Reflections on Writing
A friend passed me some material on how to write well in a scientific context (he has interests in that area), and I was struck by this particular paragraph:
[Sentence immediately preceding the following quoted paragraph: "Had the author placed all stress-worthy material in stress positions, we as a reading community would have been far more likely to interpret these sentences uniformly."]
We couch this discussion in terms of "likelihood" because we believe that meaning is not inherent in discourse by itself; "meaning" requires the combined participation of text and reader. All sentences are infinitely interpretable, given an infinite number of interpreters. As communities of readers, however, we tend to work out tacit agreements as to what kinds of meaning are most likely to be extracted from certain articulations. We cannot succeed in making even a single sentence mean one and only one thing; we can only increase the odds that a large majority of readers will tend to interpret our discourse according to our intentions. Such success will follow from authors becoming more consciously aware of the various reader expectations presented here.
- The Science of Scientific Writing
George D. Gopen, Judith A. Swan
more acknowledgments follow at the end of the text
This explains in more formal and restrained tone just why I need to know who my audience is. I assure you it is not because I am some egomaniac. =)
3 comments:
Hi CD,
You sound like you're lost. :-( A blogger needs a calling. You have to know WHY you are writing -- because as you say, blogging takes effort and takes away valuable time from all the other weird and wonderful things that you could be doing with your life.
Blogging is like a box of chocolates (c.f. Forest Gump). You don't actually know the audience that you're going to get. If you install a count meter, sure you can count the eyeballs, but you still can't read minds (or can you?). Only a very small minority are likely to leave comments.
Take it from the KTM and dun worry about pseudonyms. It's over-rated -- and why should one care if he has "credibility"? Who's running for election anytime soon?
To be a *REAL* blogger, you need a voice (or what the KTM commonly refers to as the inner voice). The easiest and probably most effective one is YOUR OWN voice.
If there's something you feel like saying, say it, and say it simply and clearly --- but say it the way you would naturally say it. Spend a little time and effort thinking about what you say before you say it. Blogging is not the same as writing a GP essay lah. Gotta be a little spontaneous. :-)
Sorry the KTM is being a kay poh again hor.
Warmest Regards and Happy Belated Valentines' Day. :-)
Hi KTM :) ,
Lost? Hmmm. Not really. The particularly vivid nightmare I had on Sunday night threw my entire workweek off-kilter, because I have not had the time and resources to think about it since then. Will get back to your comment shortly. Happy CNY :) hope you enjoyed your V-day.
Am back.
It's very interesting that your comment says so much more about your own preferences than it does about mine. :p I write because I want to... unfortunately many a time I don't want to *laughs*. Not because I have nothing to say, but more due to the fact that I'm tired, or reading books for breadth of knowledge, and therefore not quite in social worker mode.
This brings me to the question of "so what if you're not in social worker mode?" Okay I'm going to say something which I'll probably cover in more detail in some future post. I'm not a social worker, and I'm not even working in the social service sector. What I am is a very determined and very committed social work student. Whatever 'inside' information I have on SW comes from my classmates, primarily. That's why I don't write very much about day-to-day events of SW - it's simply because I don't know, and don't wish to claim what I do not know.
This further begs the question of what I'm working as at the moment. I'm sorry, I'm not going to say. Ever. :) SW suffers from enough image problems as it is, and I'd like not to add complications to that.
Actually I fully intend to pursue both SW and my present line of work, together.
Your point about having only a very small minority who leaves comments is most reassuring, and I appreciate it. Didn't think of it that way before.
I had a short discussion with FO last night about CD's pseudonymity, and how since I'm a social work student at present and also CD is set up to be a macro-level SW blog, that the "find my personal inner voice" approach is going to be a bit of a problem. He asked, "so are you going to write 'hats on' all the time, or 'hats off' some of the time?" I will have to think more about that.
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