Screw it, I’m blogging « High Narrative Fidelity

Screw it, I’m blogging

22May08

I just started writing an article on how to get your own column, and after interviewing a few of those lucky writers, I came to one consensus: get a blog. Not a silly blog, but a real blog. Some place where I can showcase what I’m working on, off-handed tidbits that currently don’t have a home, and the interesting kind of things I love to stumble across whenever I discover a good blog. During my “I am in between writing assignments looking for ideas” research, I spend a lot of time finding great information that never sees the light of day. Until now! (What I’m trying to say is that we can all blame Rebecca Skloot and her ridiculously friendly smile for this.)

Therefore, I bring you my Blogging Commandments:

1.) Coherence. Although I started in journalism working as a book critic, my interests soon took on a life of their own, and my questions started spilling over into other topics. I’m going to be using this space primarily to write about the intersection of my three main loves: arts/culture, behavior and technology. (Sorry to everyone who counts himself as a World of Warcraft/Lindsay Lohan fan every two months.)

2.) Relevance. Tech writing isn’t just a matter of writing about gadgets. When done well, it can advance ideas about how our lives are changing on a daily basis in ways that, up close, are far too subtle to detect. Writing about its influence on behavior and culture is obviously much more difficult–papers in journals and research is carried out at a snail’s pace. Hence the need to work anecdotally.

On one hand, you have people—and not enough women— writing about technology, mindless bits of information about meaningless updates. On the other hand, you have anecdotal, navel-gazing articles that come off as mere bitchiness. Neither are particularly meaningful to me, and I won’t burden anyone with them here.

3.) Occasional funny photos to break up large blocks of text.