I’m not “producing content”, I’m writing

For this blog, at least, I want to make it very clear: I’m not “producing content”, I’m writing. This may be in order to call out attention to the work of a friend or a client, it may be to scratch some particular itch for words that need to be said, and it may be because someone else’s interests dovetail with mine. Generally I try to quote enough of what other people say to be fair to them, and to tell a part of a story that you can find only by chasing through the network looking to connect ideas together at their edges.

One of the peculiar characteristics of writing for yourself and not just creating copy is that you end up finding things from your past that you still own enough to re-edit and rework as needed. A recent discussion on Twitter about paw paws helped me unearth a 2008 collection of scrapbook entries about the fruit, its names, and how it tastes. If I had produced this content for an employer (or an ex-employer), it would be long since frozen and old; but because it’s just my writing, I can go back and make it better four years later.

I’ve been happy with Typepad for a long time. Recently, some of the management changes at the organization that runs it have led to some changes in the marketing around the service, so that the relatively few old-school bloggers like me still on the system seem less and less to be the target audience, in favor of professional media people who have a certain number of words of content that they are obligated to produce before they move to the next task. I guess I can only be hopeful that the sorts of tools that are needed to crank out content on the job can also be used for old fashioned blogging where the deadlines are less definite and the goals more ambiguous.

– 30 –

Thanks to Dinah Sanders (@metagrrrl) for the Typepad commentary. The paw paw discussion came and went on Twitter, as twitter things tend to do, without leaving too much of an obvious trace; Micki Maynard and Dave Askins were at the center of it. I tried to avoid bringing in any mention of “discontent”, and failed.

Disclaimer: nothing to disclaim at this time.

Advertisement