I'm a writer. You're a writer.
But, do we know how to write? I believe that the whole idea that we are all writers now is very true. I do however wish for myself that this is not all that I do with my time. I do not want to give up the face to face interaction that I have with my friends and family. I know that if I chose to I could sit on the Internet all day and I would be able to write anything I wanted to virtually anyone. What good does that do me? It would be the cause of some horrible self hygiene I am sure.
I have to agree with the author of We Are All Writers Now, in that we are improving our writing skills with everything we do on the Internet. But I believe that, just like everything else in life, it is a balancing act in knowing how much is too much. I will not become the self consumed individual that is updating every five minutes, eating junk food, and talking to that one other person in the country that I am now 'dating'. So yes we all may be writers, but at some point we need to set the computer aside and go experience the world for ourselves.
In regards to the other articles that we read that were dealing with what kind of writing is appropriate for the web and what kind is appropriate for text I would have to agree that this is one hundred percent correct. When I am writing a paper for a class I am going to be writing differently than if I was writing a letter to my boyfriend. I think that writing on the web is just another genre for writing and that we have to learn to adapt the right principles for it just as we would any other form of writing.
As I am sitting here writing a blog on how to write on the Internet I am consumed by the fact that I may not be doing it the right way. Am I just telling you what I am going to tell you then telling you and telling you what I have just told you? I hope not but at the same time I would understand why I am if I am. This is how we are taught to write, grade school and on. I hope that you are able to bear with my writing skills and the lack there of. Hopefully, as class progresses I will get my Internet legs- or fingers for that matter- and what I have to say will end up coming out in one hundred and forty characters or less.
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I have to disagree with what you were saying about giving up your face to face time with your friends and family. If you are dedicated at anything you have to spend time at it, whether or not it is "online writing." What really is the difference between writing online versus writing on paper. Realistically, it is much faster to publish work online. There is no middle man, the publisher. And the idea that your hygiene would suffer I think is just ridiculous. With anything you do in life, you have to find a balance and make use of your time management skills. Many people these days have a craft that they focus a lot of their time on and they still make it out of the house looking good.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm noticing in your post is the demands we allow technology to place upon us. There's the assumption about giving up offline time with friends and family because of the ease(?) of online contact. Rather than demands, technology presents us with nearly endless choices for interaction, letting us mark the how, the when and the why.
ReplyDeleteAlso: just as there's more than one "right way" to write offline, there's more than one way to write properly online. In both instances, it depends on the audience, context and purpose, right? Writing in 140 characters on a blog would look a bit odd, wouldn't it?