"Every reader is a writer, every writer is a reader." - Jay Rosen

Writing my last post made me reflect on how i write a blog post. 

Sometimes my experiences just trigger off thoughts and i use my blog as an outlet to share thoughts, sometimes feelings, test ideas, and even rant.  At other times, i voice my point of view on a subject and try to add value by linking to relevant posts or articles.  And some posts are more 'constructed' - i read something and pull together pieces that somehow come together in my mind.

In this case, i read a piece by Lilia titled 'Weblog as a Pen' in my news aggregator and my mind went off on a tangent and evoked images from Avi's post on 'The Pen' that he had written almost 3 weeks ago.  I went over to Lilia's blog to leave a comment at her post and leave a pointer to Avi's there - thought she might enjoy it.  Then i thought to myself it is something that i'd like to blog too - so i edited down my comment at Lilia's post to a few words, started with quoting Lilia's piece and went on to Avi's thoughts.  Perhaps the researcher in me said 'more' - and i then did a search on Google on more expressions of a Pen - and found the piece on Pen as a metaphor.  Which immediately made me remember Dave Pollard's recent post on metaphors, where he debates the use of metaphors and ends with this thought :

"The only practical answer is to learn (and to teach young people) to recognize them, and to recognize them for what they are: Useful, incomplete, imprecise shorthand representations of reality. We could use some help in this, from teachers, from the media, from novelists and scientists and politicians and surveyors of public awareness and opinion. They are (sorry, can't resist) the most potent weapons in the fearsome and wonderful arsenal of language." 

In terms of content, moving from : 'weblog as a pen' ---> pen as a genre ---> pen as the creative potential in relationships ---> pen as a metaphor ---> (metaphors in general) ---> the future of the pen with Gen Y.

In terms of process, moving from : reading ---> commenting ---> starting a blog post ---> linking to other related posts and articles ---> reflecting.

And as i write this post - i am thinking to myself - i may just ping a few blog friends with this question on IM - hoping to get some diverse views on it.  And will also do a search in Google !  

Am curious to know how your mind moves around and assimilates the pieces of information and stimulation it receives at different points in time and from various sources.  How does this get reflected in your writing ? How do you build or write your weblog posts ?

Do leave a comment here !

9:47:57 PM    comment []  trackback []

Looks like someone turned an idea into action !

"CEO Bloggers' Club is a blog dedicated to the community of CEOs who blog. Some good stuff there for any organizational leader who is or is thinking about blogging. It looks like it invites its members to "converse" on key topics through the blog. Looks like an interesting experiment to watch on a number of levels." [Nancy White]  

Yes !

9:01:43 AM    comment []  trackback []