This might be a little frou-frou academic but let’s get polemic and creative and re-interpret The Blog. Add jazz hands as necessary.
Yes. I’m for real. I’d kinda like to encourage you to mangle language, stream consciously (or un), make wild analogies, mix and unmatch metaphors, make up words (plurk), get taxidermical with George Orwell, run fast and loose with slutty punctuation, wax lyrical, write 12,000 word essays (on porn – please – at least keep us interested), create loopy titles that are paragraphs and induce migraines and embrace that as a personal objective, take on personal titles as pronouncements and dub yourself Queen of the Gays/non-sequiturs, and toggle between play-dough and Plato.
Read poetry and if you must, write it, but for the love of ye gods and all that is holy DO NOT INFLICT ANY OF IT ON US.
Instead, channel Hemingway and write anorexic prose. Or embellish. Amplicate. Invest in curlicues and adverbs, make adjectives your bitch, and swear a mofo lot in cynical cartoons because that’s just funny.
Be funny. Insist on detailing the amoebic nuances of daily, boring, beautiful life. Tell us about the time your little brother glued his G.I. Joe’s to the kitchen wall and declared war against all things legume. But stay away from clown sex. (Probably NSFW. Google The Bloggess and clowns – and squids, while you’re at it.)
Mess around with fonts and characters and spacing to make your point. Sidle up to your point and kiss it on the shoulder. Parse. Write some unscannable pieces (whaaaaa? No lists? No bullets? No headers? Fetch the stake and the matches!). Please. Thank you.
Use vivid, physical, metaphorical language (mad, insane, crazy-making, blinded, deafened, crippled, disabled, epileptic, schizophrenic, idiot, fat, MILF- what?! because usually, not so much?? – bitch, pimp). Despair at the politically nefarious connotations of that language. Talk about it. Write through it. Invent a new language.
Link to everything. Link to Jonathan Swift (thanks, Seth). Link to nothing, at all, ever. Let your copy stand on its own.
Promise never, ever to use the word copy again. Liar.
Indulge in the dash. Be parenthetical. Be self-referential. Pretend you’re an expert. Admit you don’t know a thing except how to be wildly intellectually mastubatory while using your blog as therapy. It is all a writing prompt, after all, and we’re all in it together. Create characters (The Farmer. The Gentleman Caller. You), address your readers directly, imagine you’re Samuel Richardson and your blog is your Clarissa and in fact blogs are the new epistolary novel because that’s not pretentious at all. It’s still true.
Go dirty. Go highbrow. Result in raised eyebrows.
Decide that you can’t decide between your two beloved babies, fragment or run-on sentences, and just out and out dare people to call the grammar police. (Because what is grammar for? Writing clearly and conveying your point effectively. Use it. Abuse it. Bend it like Beckham. Do whatever you need to do.)
Be homey. Invite us in. Strip textually naked. Surprise!
W-fucking-ord.
[Reply]
kellydiels
replied:
on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I read your blog today and learned something – yes, you’re right that we connect with the dilemmas we’ve experienced. This has nothing to do with this post. I just wanted to say I appreciated that tidbit. And thanks for the luv.
[Reply]
Paddy
replied:
on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
@kellydiels,
woo, thanks for reading my blog too! glad you learned something from it too
[Reply]
“Admit you don’t know a thing except how to be wildly intellectually mastubatory while using your blog as therapy.”
Can I love this any more than I do?
[Reply]
kellydiels
replied:
on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Oh you shameless flatterer. Do go on.
[Reply]
dude. last week you left a comment on my blog that said:
“Also, next week on my blog, I will be discussing Samuel Richardson and Clarissa and the impact of 18th and 19th C novels on the blog genre.”
and THIS is your discussion? It’s barely a mention!
I thought you were gonna go all polemic and was hoping for some dirt on 18th century feminism and sexuality and rape-as-a-social-stepping-stone and how that ties into blogging and letter writing…. but you are an intellectual tease. If my brain had balls, they would be blue right now.
[Reply]
kellydiels
replied:
on November 23rd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
you are a tough cookie! This is NOT the discussion. This is foreplay.
Actually the future, as yet unfinished post is kicking my ass. But I will prevail. And email your critical ass, right thereafter.
[Reply]
I needed to read this post RIGHT NOW! I’ve been holding off blogging because I obsess over the words, the punctuation, etc. I feel like I’m sounding too much like me, or not enough like me, or sounding like that other girl, or that guy. Just WRITE!
[Reply]
“Yes. I’m for real. I’d kinda like to encourage you to mangle language, stream consciously (or un), make wild analogies, mix and unmatch metaphors, make up words (plurk),”
Plurk is not a real word? It’s got triple word score written all over it. Plunky post–I heart that. Double em dash and all. Ahmmaaah! Thank you
[Reply]