To Write Or Not To Write

I just came across a blog called Junk Food Science, run by a nurse with a lot of initials after her name, Sandy Szware. I was moved to comment on one of the stories and found that there was no provision for doing so, nor for even Emailing her. No Email address. Yet she clearly solicits sponsorship, and donations through PayPal. In spite of all the letters after her name, her reasoning does not seem entirely in lock-step with either the mainstream medical community or Big Pharma. I wonder why she chose not to allow comments or provide an Email address.

My blog has been up almost the same period of time. The number of comments has not been as great as I would have anticipated. I have gotten more Email about my perspectives than people posting comments to the blog. But sparse though this input is, particularly if you also consider new informational or theoretical value, rather than just acknowledgment or annoyance, the very possibility that people can say something if they wish, is a motivating force that draws me back to the keyboard.

Not only that, there are times when a comment points me in a direction I probably wouldn't have taken without the input. So I can only wonder how Ms. Szware keeps it going in the face of absolute dead silence. I don't know if I would continue in such a solitary pursuit. In earlier years, when I did some ghosting, editing, and script doctoring, I noticed there was never any writer's block. While I preferred to write my own material to editing or ghost writing other work, I definitely liked never staring at the blank page, even for fifteen or twenty minutes.

I guess I would have continued that work, if not for two exasperating celebrity clients in a row. I suppose I could do it again if my first focus was only the potential merit of the project.

Of course, writing on the net is a sloppier activity. It is much more unedited "stream of consciousness," conversational. The guidelines of style have taken a back seat to a casualness and spontaneity that is a small blessing and the great curse of the net.

My previous post was unedited, written in about twenty minutes. No doubt I should look at it in a few weeks to see how it may be polished or smoothed out. This was a regular habit in the old days. I must not miss it too much. I do little editing anymore. I have some intention to do it, but don't.

I think that we tend to be more literate than a generation ago, but the distractions continue to grow. I don't know if the quality of the writing, even in commercially published work, has improved. I would have thought that the sheer volume of writings available at our fingertips would improve over-all quality. Has quality been devalued? Will audio/visual eventually take over entirely? I don't know.