Unguarded Blogs: Pros and Cons (2015-04-06)
Positive: The traditional routes to publication are very rocky, and full of detours and roadblocks. And even if you do arrive at your destination, it usually takes an inordinate amount of time. With blogs, your work can be available as soon you finish it, and there are no editors or censors to interfere with your doing so.
Negative: If it’s easy, it’s easy for everyone. But so is writing crap easy—as evidenced by those readers’ comments sections of websites. On the other hand, writing something worthwhile is not easy. Editors serve a real purpose as guardians of the gates to publication. They weed out what is of low quality or inappropriate for their audience. Without these guardians, it’s no surprise that the Internet has more worthless clutter than worthwhile reading. It takes a modicum more effort and sophistication to put out a blog than to scribble something in the comments section of a website, but it is still too easy for those who can neither write nor think competently. And too easy to over-estimate the worth of one’s blog postings.
My approach: I try to write carefully. I assume that anyone sampling my scribbles and finding them worthless won’t bother to return to my Writings On The Wall.
