I notice
that I am not the only person who reflects on the year’s blogging experience.
Chris Grey is an organisational theorist who started a blog to accompany his
fascinating book A
Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap book about studying
organisations – and has a post identifying some of
the year’s themes (as well as readership stats)
I
particularly liked the description of his working method -
I also try to include in each post copious links to a wide variety of media sources and, to a lesser extent, academic works. I don’t know how many readers follow these links but at any rate I feel better-informed as a result of digging around to find them.
Typically, I think of a topic on Friday morning, ponder it during the day and write the post on Friday evening (yes, my life really is that exciting). Most posts take two to three hours to research and write.
I’ve been
blogging since 2009, with a resignation from a major project in China I was
leading in 2010 leading to a slow withdrawal from the paid labour front and
giving me more time to enjoy the stretch of country between the Carpathians
(where I summer) and the Balkans (where I winter) and to read, write……and
muse…..
And last
year I collected the year’s posts, put them in chronological order and wrote
both a Preface and Introduction for In
Praise of Doubt – a blogger’s year which
tried to answer such questions why
anyone should be bothered to read my material – and also why some of us have
developed this blogging habit -
My claim for the reader’s
attention is simply expressed –
· experience in a variety of
sectors (and countries) – each closely manned with “gatekeepers” whose language
and rules act to exclude us
· the compulsion (from some
50 years), to record what I felt were the lessons of each experience in short
papers
· Long and extensive reading
· A “voice” which has been
honed by the necessity of speaking clearly to audiences of different
nationalities and class
· intensive trawling of the
internet for wide range of writing
· notes kept of the most
important of those readings
· shared in hyperlinks with
readers
I confess somewhere to an
aversion to those writers (so many!) who try to pretend they have a unique
perspective on an issue and whose discordant babble make the world such a
difficult place to understand. I look instead for work which, as google puts
it, builds on the shoulders of others……my role in a team is that of the resource
person….who finds and shares material….
Perhaps my
father’s hand is evident in the format and discipline of the blogpost – he was
a Presbyterian Minister who would, every Saturday evening, take himself off to
his study to anguish over his weekly sermon which he would duly deliver from
the pulpit the next morning……Arguably indeed the dedication given these past 7
years to the blog is a form of “giving of account” or justification of one’s
life!! I have grown to appreciate the
discipline involved in marshalling one’s thoughts around a theme (in my
father’s case it was a biblical quotation).
I rather
like the format of a blogpost of some 700 words (at most a couple of pages).
Management guru Charles Handy
famously said that he had learned to put his thoughts in 450 words as a result
of the “Thought for the Day” BBC programme to which he was a great contributor.
The photo is of a new Bekhiarov I acquired this week (with, lower, the first one I bought from this great BG realist) - both from the great Absinthe water colour gallery in Sofia where I found this week a wonderful 400 page catalogue of the International Watercolour Society's 2016 exhibition in Varna - with a superb global collection. This is their 2013 catalogue
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ReplyDeletewhile I appreciate (particularly positive) feedback,this is beginning to look too much like "produce placement"!
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice to know a bit more about why readers find particular posts interesting......
I meant "product" placement
ReplyDelete