Some random thoughts on writing for the web

For creative writers like me who are old enough to remember manual typewriters, positioning oneself as a "creator of web content" can be a somewhat daunting task. Especially those of us who didn't get a degree in Journalism and who don't keep an APA style manual on their nightstand [not that it isn't somewhere on my shelf!] might find what we are asked to do a little nebulous. "Snappy! Friendly! Tech-savvy!" Except for that last part, it sounds pretty much like standard advertising copy. [note: if that last link doesn't creep you out, then you're not a professional writer.]

Meanwhile, I surf the web every day [sometimes I miss those days of hanging out at the public library, but the coffee's better at my house] and I keep coming across sentences [or the fragments thereof] that make me groan. While snappy is good, language pared down to the point of being little more than a thin layer of buzzwords is not something that enhances communication.

I'm on Facebook just like you are - come on, no sense in denying it - and do you know what I've noticed? Every day, i read the complaints of users who are saying [1] the interface gets in the way of their easily finding out things or telling about things; and [2] they're "dumbing themselves down" in terms of language. Is this an inescapable side effect of the medium? I don't think so. The "Notes" area that's linked to on every Facebook page, for example, is a rich and mostly unexplored opportunity to get back to something pretty close to what you and I might recognize as blogging - I know, it seems so old-school now.

As for Twitter, it certainly is very Zen, very editorial, and very good for one's character - like a literary bran muffin or dish of broccoli, if you will - to be forced to condense one's thoughts down to what can be expressed in 140 characters or less. One of the many hats I wear is the rock trivia fanatic, and sometimes the impulse comes over me to "Tweet" a brief song lyric pertinent to the way I'm feeling in that moment, to see if any of my followers will respond with the next line. And for creative writers, anything that helps to stir the pot is worth keeping around. Not to mention the fact that using Twitter has greatly reduced my need to carry countless little scraps of paper in my pockets.

I guess what it all boils down to is this: Use the tools, but don't let them use you. When I was in college, I typed when I was sitting at my typewriter, I scribbled in my diary when I was away from my dorm room, I doodled in the margins of my class notes; my walls were covered with drawings and paintings, and everything I drew and painted contained some text. I also wrote letters both on my typewriter and longhand whenever I could. This helped me flex my creative muscles as well as keeping my friends and family up to date as to how I was doing. Similarly, online social media are great for networking or just keeping in touch with your friends, sharing an in-joke or a crazy candid snapshot - but they're also useful for keeping in touch with yourself and your own process. In the next few weeks, I'm going to be spending a lot of hours consolidating and editing things I've blogged under various fake names since, oh, about 2000. I'll probably be discarding a lot of commentary around links that have gone dead, but there are some rants out there that could be very entertaining, maybe not too incriminating, and most definitely would never have come into existence without the provocation inherent in this medium.