Writing
The cool thing about blogs is discovering just how much great writing is out there. Without devolving into a bunch of syrupy prognostications about how blogs will transform publishing blah blah blah, I think it's fair to say that they are starting to transform reading.
In the past few weeks, I've found a handful of bloggers whose writing alone is enough to ensure that I will be back for more. How many mainstream columnists can you say that about? Sure, everybody probably has their favorite columnist in the local paper, and you might buy a publication just to read the essay by P.J. O'Rourke or Maureen Dowd. But I've never bookmarked a half-dozen columnists that I hadn't heard of before. I just don't get the exposure.
Doubtless part of that is due to the awesome feedback loop that is the blogosphere. I stumbled across Garfield Ridge, which pointed me to Mitchieville, which introduced me to SS@S, which linked to Jack Spencer. Even if Instapundit links to a certain column in a small-town paper, that columnist is not going to have a "column roll" of all his favorite writers. You're going to read him once and then forget about him. Blogs have this whole six-degrees-of-Glenn Reynolds thing going while newspaper columnists are trapped in their own self-supporting biosphere -- it's clean and functional, and interesting in its limited fashion, but it's fundamentally cut off from the real ecosystem outside its walls.
This is all by way of saying that two little pieces of writing have stuck with me all week. I mean, apart from Da Mayor. All his stuff sticks like hot silly putty. Hot. Silly. Putty. Go on, say it like that, slowly and in a husky voice. Kinda kinky, huh?
Anyway, the first piece was Sex's response to a challenge to write a short story in only 250 words. There were some other restrictions, like the year had to be 1968, and it had to include the phrase, "All due respect".
I saw it on my first visit over there, and when I read the challenge, I was like, "Right. This will be painful." Of course that was just a bitchy front for what I really meant, which was, "Damn. That would be tough. I doubt that even I could pull it off."
The result was a surprisingly gripping little thriller. It's hard to imagine such a thing playing out in just 250 words, but you can slap me with wet pumpkin innards if she didn't pull it off.
I'm sorry I don't have the direct link right now, but if you head to her blog and scroll down, it should be there.
The other bit was by the above-mentioned Jack Spencer, whom Sex links to. I think his blog is called jackJackJACK or something, but the URL is a jumble of letters, like sdfta or something. I can't look it up right now.
The piece that struck me was in Jack's rant about his prick of an English teacher who sprung a surprise D+ on him when he had been running a solid B all semester. In the middle of this lament, Jack sets out to prove that he can write about just about anything, and he starts riffing on his shoelaces of all things (I am struck with uncertainty at this point about whether this riff is actually in his teacher rant. It might have been another post). The result was strangely engaging.
Hope you all dig.
In the past few weeks, I've found a handful of bloggers whose writing alone is enough to ensure that I will be back for more. How many mainstream columnists can you say that about? Sure, everybody probably has their favorite columnist in the local paper, and you might buy a publication just to read the essay by P.J. O'Rourke or Maureen Dowd. But I've never bookmarked a half-dozen columnists that I hadn't heard of before. I just don't get the exposure.
Doubtless part of that is due to the awesome feedback loop that is the blogosphere. I stumbled across Garfield Ridge, which pointed me to Mitchieville, which introduced me to SS@S, which linked to Jack Spencer. Even if Instapundit links to a certain column in a small-town paper, that columnist is not going to have a "column roll" of all his favorite writers. You're going to read him once and then forget about him. Blogs have this whole six-degrees-of-Glenn Reynolds thing going while newspaper columnists are trapped in their own self-supporting biosphere -- it's clean and functional, and interesting in its limited fashion, but it's fundamentally cut off from the real ecosystem outside its walls.
This is all by way of saying that two little pieces of writing have stuck with me all week. I mean, apart from Da Mayor. All his stuff sticks like hot silly putty. Hot. Silly. Putty. Go on, say it like that, slowly and in a husky voice. Kinda kinky, huh?
Anyway, the first piece was Sex's response to a challenge to write a short story in only 250 words. There were some other restrictions, like the year had to be 1968, and it had to include the phrase, "All due respect".
I saw it on my first visit over there, and when I read the challenge, I was like, "Right. This will be painful." Of course that was just a bitchy front for what I really meant, which was, "Damn. That would be tough. I doubt that even I could pull it off."
The result was a surprisingly gripping little thriller. It's hard to imagine such a thing playing out in just 250 words, but you can slap me with wet pumpkin innards if she didn't pull it off.
I'm sorry I don't have the direct link right now, but if you head to her blog and scroll down, it should be there.
The other bit was by the above-mentioned Jack Spencer, whom Sex links to. I think his blog is called jackJackJACK or something, but the URL is a jumble of letters, like sdfta or something. I can't look it up right now.
The piece that struck me was in Jack's rant about his prick of an English teacher who sprung a surprise D+ on him when he had been running a solid B all semester. In the middle of this lament, Jack sets out to prove that he can write about just about anything, and he starts riffing on his shoelaces of all things (I am struck with uncertainty at this point about whether this riff is actually in his teacher rant. It might have been another post). The result was strangely engaging.
Hope you all dig.
<< Home