Emptybottle.org

One of the things I talked about in my long screed the other day was that I don’t really give a damn how well someone writes on the web, as long as they have something interesting to say. This is, of course, only partly true. It’s always more complicated than that, as annoying people are known to say with exasperating regularity.

More accurately, what I was trying to say was that passion and energy can be more important than accuracy — it was true for punk rock, and I think it can be true with writing on the web as as well. When I teach English (as a foreign language), I talk to my students about the differences between ‘fluency’ and ‘accuracy’ and how, although both are important, spoken communication depends more on fluency, at least for their purposes. There are differences between the types of language you use, depending on where you’re using it. You know, register.
That isn’t to say that if someone writes execrably, that I have the time to read them, usually. I love good writing, and I knows it when I reads it. There’s just too many textsongs being howled into the void out there to waste too much time on bad writers, at least when they are both bad and boring. There are plenty of ‘good’ writers out there that would bore the tits off a medicated monkey, too, if the monkey in question had them (and health care insurance). But there are also plenty of unpolished writers who through their madcap, determinedly-amateurish bang and crash manage to transmit some of their enthusiasm and sweet madness, regardless of the clumsiness with which they wield their tools. Now these folks, I like. I’m one of ’em, at least on this site.

The best of all possible worlds is great writers who have interesting things to say, and who say them with passion and creativity. There are more of those around than I ever thought possible, before this weblogging thing took off.

This is, of course, obvious.

A couple of people (it could possibly have been the same person, but masked under an all-too-easy InTaRWEb pseudonym, but I suspect not) took me to task for the following paragraph from my long rant the other day :

One of my critics, after I sent an email asking why he had decided the writing wasn’t that great (though he liked my site design and ideas), offered a useful editorial-style breakdown of the things he thought were wrong with it (“Maybe x instead of y?”, “Do you really mean ‘mild’ here?” and so on) to which I responded with sincere thanks for the input, but also with an arrogant comment that I knew exactly what I was doing when I wrote the paragraph, and a suggestion not to teach his grandmother to suck eggs, basically. That I appreciated the input, but there was nothing there I didn’t know already.

The second critic (‘Fozzie Bear’), if indeed it was a second, popped into the comments thread to offer, all in caps, the following commentary, after quoting that same paragraph :

“THAT WAS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER READ.”

with no real reason why it might be THE WORST THING he or she EVER READ, and no explanation of either what was wrong with it, or why he or she was so exercised over its clumsiness. Double-posted the comment, even. I imagine my interlocutor so quivering with apoplectic rage that an essay containing so egregiously crappy a paragraph could receive so much praise and attention ’round the web that their finger was all a-tremble with barely-contained fury as they clicked the ‘Post’ button.

So I deleted it. f–k that noise. If you can’t be reasonably civil, you’re not welcome here. And if you’re going to say that sort of thing, civilly, you’d better back it up with some examples of your own senses-shatteringly glorious prose. Walk the walk. Jaybird ass, alligator mouth.

I regret deleting the comment, but it was first thing in the morning, and my actions tend to be a bit… precipitous before my first coffee. See, though, I bring it up again because it’s amusing to me, because it dovetails so nicely with what I was actually saying in the essay, and what I was quoting, and reinforces one of my points. I’m compelled to pull out my Eggers rantquote again (and I know some people seem to hate Eggers, for some reason – I’m looking at you, Steve) :

and I myself said

(That paragraph could have used another editing pass, too, maybe, but so what?)

It amuses me that after posting an essay in which I tried (amongst other things) to make a point that passion is more important than style, there were those who would criticize me for the style in which I wrote it. That’s the way of these things, though, isn’t it?

I wrote that long piece in one two-hour coffee-fueled sitting (after reading the comment I linked to about parties and publication at Joi Ito’s site), off the top of my head, after a week or so of thinking about the topic occasionally, ran it through two editing passes, and posted it, all before lunch. It wasn’t meant to be a polished, long-pondered think piece. I don’t do those on my website, much. It’s a weblog, for christ’s sakes! I shoot from the hip, pardner. I ain’t no citified essay-writin’ girly-man! You know, all that crap.
The paragraph that my two critics took issue with was clunky, though, I admit. I’d probably rewrite it, if I gave a sh-t.

But this is a weblog-thing, see, and although I have nothing at all against editing after-the-fact for my worst offenses against clarity or readability (and I might yet go back and fix it up a bit, since thanks to the massive response it looks like it might be something that won’t just disappear off the radar forever once it’s below the fold) normally I wouldn’t bother. I write on my weblog the way I talk, for the most part, and I made a conscious decision to do so. I can write in other styles and registers, and have, for money and everything. For the most part I choose not to, here.

Although the money wouldn’t suck.

I said what I wanted to say, for my own benefit and no one else’s, to be honest, even if I am happy, again, that it struck chords in people. Although I am confident that I can (at times) kick texty ass, I know that I have many weaknesses, blind spots and outright failings as a writer, too. I’ve never studied this sh-t. I’ve read everything over the years, basically, but I never done did no text-larnin’ about the litterchur and stuff. I’m trying to become a better writer, because it’s something I love (and I think I have gotten better after 3 years of writing in public), but I’m not trying all that hard to write deathless prose, here.

If the paragraph that people quoted and criticized did suck, and I agree that it wasn’t exactly, er, optimal, that’s fine. It didn’t matter. The essay was one of the most popular I’ve ever written, even with a clunker or five (that I might have fixed up if I’d done a third editing pass), and bang hoopla! there’s my point about passion and commitment over spit and polish again.
When a band is up on the stage, they don’t stop when the guitarist hits a sour note, go back, and make him get it right. It ruins the experience, kills the party, puts out the fire, interrupts the flow.

Weblogs are all those other things I mentioned the other day, and a million more besides, including, sometimes, a performance. Don’t let the critics and parasitic parsers of other people’s passion put you off, friends. Write from your heart and gonads about things that you care about. If there’s a clunker or three in there, forget it or fix it fast, move on, and keep the song rolling.
Your audience just may love you for it. Mine seems to†.

When I (or you) write the great Canadian (or whatever) novel, we can do a little more editing and rewriting then. Maybe.

[†Opinions to the contrary are welcome, as always, as long as you don’t step on my dick too hard.]