Plan Less, Write More

As a backlash to the overwhelming crappiness of most blogs (and, frankly, out of embarassment at the fairly poor initial quality of my naive early blog efforts), I have been overthinking blogging. As a result, my $HOME has ten outlines and half-written articles and over-written blog entires that have musroomed into manuscripts. My resolution: plan less, write more. This is the blog version of the agile software mantra: release early, release often. The paradox, of course, is learning to be disciplined about being /less disciplined/. Part of what brings this on is the experience of reading blogs regularly for the first time over the last few weeks, and discovering that the novelty and turnover of content is /not/, in fact, a strict tradeoff with quality. For example, there are some VC blogs that are infrequent and crappy (I am in too good a mood this morning to name names, although, gentle reader, it does not escape your correspondent that this very blog may hew closer than is comfortable to that description). Then, there are [http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/ VC blogs] that are prolific /and/ good. Doubtless, the best bloggers could refine and revise for some marginal gain in quality. But the decreasing marginal returns of extra structure and revision would be outweighted by having them put out yet another quality — though not perfect — piece of writing. My other resolution: dispense with a surfeit of caution. Or, to paraphrase “Uncle Joe” Stalin, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. If making a point involves a deserved harangue of one rogue or another, I will deliver it. And building on the first resolution, if exposing a bit of passion or intensity means a typo ecsapes the editor’s pencil, so be it. For example, David Cowan [http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2006/04/created-by-school-teacher.html lays the smack down on a charlatan] in a blog entry so clearly motivated by passionate interest that the reader cannot help but be capitivated and delighted, despite the fact that the entire entry is a typographical and structural monstrosity. Final resolution: no more than one “gentle reader” comment per posting.

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