I need to start thinking of blogging less as "production of text for public consumption" (though it is that) and more of a practice. But practice for what, I ask myself? And that seems to be my key question as I embark on a little experiment. How can I use this blog, Old English in New York, to think through my dissertation as I move through the steps of revision, rewriting, researching and writing the next three chapters of the project?
So: I am going to attempt to write a bit each day about what I'm working on in my dissertation. I'll still be posting substantial things over at ITM. But when I started this blog -- oh, those many months ago! -- it was supposed to work for me. I've been neglecting that aspect of blogging, and I think, as I continue my grand experiment in blogging the academic experience (okay, okay: my small experiment in blogging a graduate student's experience), it's time to get back to the basics, as they say.
I will attempt to post every weekday. We'll see how that works out. And what it yields, if anything. For now, however, I have obligations that require my real-life presence, presently.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Blogging as Practice
Posted by Mary Kate Hurley at 12:48 PM
Labels: blogging as practice
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2 comments:
Practice for:
1) producing other things for public consumption
2) in composition, we teach the wee undergrads about different methods for pre-writing, steps to develop and shape ideas before even drafting a paper....I try and view blogging in some ways as a form of pre-writing for an academic paper or book...a place to shape and develop ideas that is both intensely personal and at the same time benefits from the reactions of others and my interactions with them and their reactions.
I'm looking forward to more posts from your work!
es yes MKH. I have been thinking the same thing in my neck of the blogging woods. I also think about, when I'm not blogging, simply the fact that the blog gives me the possibility that someone is reading me--that my work is being read--even if it is half-formed and whimsical.
Just posting even little bits I think changes something fundamental--or at least has the capacity to do so--in how I think, write etc.--that possibility of audience is a wildly beautiful term to be floating around, conscious of unconscious, in the writing mind.
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