writing stuff

I’m about to commit the cardinal sin. I’m about to write a blog entry about writing blog entries.

I know, I know. That became boring about 10 minutes before RSS even existed. Let’s get it out of the way quick.

I’ve been doing this for a few months now, and it’s been OK so far. I find writing things down helps me clarify my thoughts on a topic. It also means I can point to it later as a shorthand for answering a question, or go back and re-read what I wrote to see if my ideas have changed.

Occasionally I get comments posted, so I guess other people read it too. But I don’t know for sure, because WordPress 1.5 doesn’t seem to have any statistics in it.

There are a few style points that I’ve been keeping in mind and need to improve on. By “style points” I mean things that make a journal entry easier to read. For instance, I try to use paragraphs appropriately, and break up long tracts of text with subheadings, lists, images and different formatting. The idea is to break the writing down and make it look more approachable. I think I could do better at this.

photos and writing

Whilst reading Joel On Software I began noticing that he has a habit of putting totally irrelevant images in his articles. Sometimes they have some vague connection to what he is writing about but just as often they’ll be random photos – for instance, pictures of people on a beach at the top of an article on software bloat. At one point he wrote that he once read a book about the web, and in it the author had put lots of irrelevant colour photos. These didn’t add anything to the text, but they were happy bright photos and made him feel happy and bright about the future of the web. It made the book easier and more pleasant to read, even affected his opinion of the subject matter!

I think Joel is not quite as skilful in the use of his images. My eyes gloss over them instantly, the photos don’t usually add much. They certainly don’t affect how I feel. He could probably replace them with empty boxes and they’d serve the same purpose. Nonetheless I am glad they are there, as they make his articles easier to read.

length

I am sometimes told I write too much. Probably true. I often go back and rephrase things to be shorter, but the result is sometimes still too long. I can’t decide if this is because I talk too much, or if it’s just because I choose to talk about “big” topics. Many blogs I read are simply linking to stuff elsewhere, or talking about personal lives. The ones that talk about “big” things, like Joel On Software or some of the MS blogs, tend to be about the same length as mine.

personal life

I don’t write much about this. I could do, there is enough material … but I doubt anyone cares.

feedback

Got any feedback? Ideas for things you’d like me to write about? Stuff you enjoyed or hated? Just want to say hi? Then drop me a comment and let me know!