The Art of On-line Journalling
It turns out my comment a few days ago about Metajournals was incorrect: It's not just Gabby Hon's deal, but is a collaborative effort by several members of "the on-line journalling community". It's not a bad site, although I could quibble with some of its organization; on the other hand, some of the best sites on the Web haven't fully solved the organizational and workflow issues, even excellent sites like ESPNet SportsZone haven't worked through all the challenges. (Part of the problem may be that we have too many graphic designers with programming skills building the sites, and not enough programmers with graphic design sense. Part of the problem may also be that I often disagree with the sensibilities of professional graphic designers.)
But I digress.
"The on-line journalling community" is a strange thing. I've been writing in this journal for nearly a year, but I've rarely felt like part of a community, nor have I felt an inclination to join such a thing. I don't really see why I'd have much in common with other journallers anyway (and not just because I spell "journallers" with two 'L's); at least on chat forums and USENET newsgroups I can find people with like interests and maybe even points of view, but simply being part of a class of people-who-write-on-line-journals seems like too tenuous a commonality.
As I wrote yesterday, I rejoined the DIARY-L mailing list, just out of curiosity. And, as I said, it's high-volume but low-content. There are a few nuggets of interest there, such as the thread about having crushes on or being in relationships with people met on-line (not something I'm into, personally; I like to think I got over my propensity to fall over that trap back in college).
My impression of the list generally is the same as when I was on it last fall: A lot of people who like to chat idly with each other, and whose journals comprise a major part of their life. What little talk there is about the experience of on-line journalling is often drowned in a dozen posts of witty banter and in-jokes. This is quite a difference from, say, The Boston Red Sox Mailing List, which tends to have a high number of meaty - even erudite - articles about baseball and the Red Sox, and which tend to dominate the witty banter and sarcastic remarks. (I contribute some of each.)
If it sounds like I have a rather dim view of the people on the DIARY-L list, well, that's not entirely fair; I don't know most of these people. Pretty much my only exposure to them is through the list, a forum which mainly makes me wonder, "why are they committing so much effort and typing to these relatively slight subjects?" Obviously they find them interesting, but talking about journals seems like such a limited subject to me. Whatever it is that they find compelling, it doesn't compute for me.
I do read the journals of a few of them, such as Melody Paulk, also involved in Metajournals, and who doesn't update nearly as often as I'd like. I've checked out journals of some others, and didn't find them to my taste, such as Ginkgo's journal, which has struck me as being very visually attractive and stylistic, but not a particularly good read.
Of course, I should talk, with my minimalist design and comparatively low readership (I get about 20 visitors per entry within a few days of putting it up; not bad, but hardly in "celebrity" territory).
Is there an "art" to on-line journalling? Well, I think at most it's pretty much the same as writing for an APA: The key is to have good writing skills, and secondarily to have an interesting layout (it's vital that the layout be readable of course). But the writing is the key issue; the visual appearance is very, very much a subsidiary thing. As long as it's functional enough for people to navigate, then nothing more is really required.
So I see journalling - on-line or otherwise - to pretty much be a matter of writing. It has a certain style to it - the episodic feel, the immediacy of the content, and of course the real-life subject matter - which makes it different from other styles of writing (fiction, or magazine articles, for instance), and I'd argue that that is the key feature that makes it worth considering on its own.
These matters rarely seem to be discussed, though. Most of the publicity - both internal and external - seems to go to the "community" and to the audacity of putting one's life on-line (what are we, firemen?).
Small reasons, perhaps. But enough to keep me going so far. Perhaps not the reasons that other journallers do what they do.
Oh, and I also put an Apple decal in the window of my office which faces the hallway. Woo-hoo!
Tonight I hosted our book discussion group, in which we discussed Walter Jon Williams' City on Fire. I brought out the latest copy of The New York Review of Science Fiction, which has a positive review of it. (I thought it was mediocre, as you may recall.) People generally seemed to feel it was enjoyable, but not terribly substantial, and that it's not the sort of book one thinks of as a solid Hugo Award nominee.
The discussion was good. Some people liked my new maps (one woman made a comment about how they liven up my "bachelor pad" a little; hmm), and I baked cookies and bought pretzels to munch on. The cookies (still warm when we started) were a big hit, as was the apple cider in the fridge. Funny the little things that grab peoples' attention.
And now, I am definitely going to bed. I must start going to bed earlier and getting on a better sleep cycle. I haven't been focusing on things like that, and now that I've gotten past many of the tasks I've been working on, I can start. Also need to start biking to work; I'm hoping I can do so tomorrow, if I wake up in time.
These two things I think will lead to a happier me, and ghod knows I can use one of those!
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