At times I feel there is nothing to write about. But the next moment there are a lot many things to dwell upon. I’ll try to grab one of these fleeting subjects and try to elaborate on it.
Before that let me tell you one (more) difference between ‘diarying’ and ‘blogging’ – or should I say ‘writing using a computer’? In the case of the diary; before you put pen to paper you have to be very clear about what you are going to write. Not just the idea – but how you want to present it. The words. Where to begin. What are the details to be included. Once you start a sentence you have to finish it. You can’t go about writing and rewriting and correcting it. You have to be very careful – because in a diary there is no back space key or delete key. And a page which resembles a draft or a scribble pad does not look good in a diary. But a blog is different. The computer screen and keyboard gives you the freedom to play around with language before deciding on the final outcome.
Is this good or bad? In earlier times – read the pre-book era – literary works were ‘stored in memory’. Homer composed the great epics Iliad and Odyssey in his mind and handed them down to generations through ‘word of mouth’. When the practice of writing them down and storing them as documents was introduced many scholars of that period lamented about human race losing their capacity to memorize. They feared that the faculty to memorize would become defunct.
When you write with the help of a computer you tend to be a little more relaxed because you can always ‘back space’ or ‘delete’. You become a little lazy and stop ‘thinking tight’. You stop ‘subbing’ in mind. You lose a little of your sharpness. Correct me if I am wrong.
Ooops… again I ended up comparing blog and diary instead of writing about what I actually planned to write about – about driving. I’ll do that in my next post.
Before that let me tell you one (more) difference between ‘diarying’ and ‘blogging’ – or should I say ‘writing using a computer’? In the case of the diary; before you put pen to paper you have to be very clear about what you are going to write. Not just the idea – but how you want to present it. The words. Where to begin. What are the details to be included. Once you start a sentence you have to finish it. You can’t go about writing and rewriting and correcting it. You have to be very careful – because in a diary there is no back space key or delete key. And a page which resembles a draft or a scribble pad does not look good in a diary. But a blog is different. The computer screen and keyboard gives you the freedom to play around with language before deciding on the final outcome.
Is this good or bad? In earlier times – read the pre-book era – literary works were ‘stored in memory’. Homer composed the great epics Iliad and Odyssey in his mind and handed them down to generations through ‘word of mouth’. When the practice of writing them down and storing them as documents was introduced many scholars of that period lamented about human race losing their capacity to memorize. They feared that the faculty to memorize would become defunct.
When you write with the help of a computer you tend to be a little more relaxed because you can always ‘back space’ or ‘delete’. You become a little lazy and stop ‘thinking tight’. You stop ‘subbing’ in mind. You lose a little of your sharpness. Correct me if I am wrong.
Ooops… again I ended up comparing blog and diary instead of writing about what I actually planned to write about – about driving. I’ll do that in my next post.
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