Redefining the Journal
Weblog writers are in a position to redefine the journal for the blogosphere.A blog journal is a public journal. It is be crafted and edited even as it is being written from day to day. It is a published work, but published more as a serial than as a completed work.
In this position, web loggers can
- Vary approaches, experiment with other ways of presenting the daily round than a linear report. Because the journal is a serial publication, writers can take risks, try things out, and if they don't work, try something else.
- Broaden the sense of what a "journal" can be. Make the journal more than a record. What that "more" can be will depend on how bloggers approach the journal, what they do, and how...
The following suggestions come by way of observation on how some bloggers go about it -
- present narratives of what happened, dialogues, alternative perspectives...
- use lists, haiku-like posts of the daily round - not poems and lists about the writer, but lists and other forms to record the events of the day.
- occasional essays: that is, essays spurred by the occasion. see http://www.joshcom.org/joggua.html
- follow Mark Twain's advice. that is, don't say "The day was wonderful," bring on the day and let it say "This day was..."
- don't swallow complexity in overview. present it for others to interpret.
- create a story over time: follow issues within the home as well as outside, strike recurring themes and ideas.
- in a daily journal, a plot unfolds without your foreknowledge. you create plot as you tell the story, and you only know the story up to the moment from which you tell it. so play with the narrative position, the moment of writing, write about what's happening when you're writing, write the narrative of the day up to the moment of writing. take note that you have to write the next episode of your life only after it occurs: you write in the past tense, on reflection. read epistolary novels to see how this works.
- link as a way to develop postings beyond the internal. watch for - 'look for' - things to link to and incorporate. the blogger is well linked. a journalling blogger links as part of the journal.
- observe closely. narrate selectively.
- develop postings concisely and subtly
- incorporate other voices
- narrate in other voices, voices that let you say something about the day that your daily voice would miss
- Make It New Pound, or Modernists Just as the modernists redefined what poetry and literature can be, blogging, bloggers, can redefine what is possible in publishing.
examples of what's possible -
- http://tamiam.blogspot.com/ - risky, tries out variety of forms (dialogue), typographic effects
- http://www.girlhacker.com/log.html - for how she incorporates linked material, subordinating it to her own thoughts, but using it as a starting point for a journal. she doesn't to it as a journal, noting on her [http://www.girlhacker.com/1999_11_01_archive.html archive page] that "It's not really a journal and not merely a list of must-see links, but more of a place to stick those random thoughts that pop into my head." notable for how long she's been keeping it (since Nov. 18, 1999), and for how regularly she posts, which makes for a fine-grain narrative. she distinguishes between her regular posts and [http://www.girlhacker.com/2004_03_01_archive.html#10781941149740277 navel gazing.]
- http://walkawayrenee.blogspot.com - concise. common themes developed over time. subject of postings showed variations on a theme. how she uses images - linking to them. selected and tweaked her template to suit the direction of the journal and the prose.
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