November 29, 2010
One of my favorite hobbies is writing. It has always been a great way for me to work through ideas and clear my head. I prefer to do most, if not all, of my personal writing by hand in a Moleskine notebook. I spend the vast majority of my day on my MacBook Pro (which will hopefully soon be replaced by a new 13” MacBook Air) so I really enjoy stepping away from the computer for awhile and taking the time to think and write slowly. I use my notebooks in all sorts of ways including jotting down thoughts, transcribing cool lyrics and quotes, scribbling out company and product ideas, and journaling about experiences. It’s basically my commonplace book. As defined on Wikipedia, “commonplace books were most popular in early modern Europe [and] are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.” These are collections of whatever the author deems important and can follow rigid structures or be completely unorganized. Among the entries in my notebooks are the beginnings of what could be much longer essays but which, up to this point, have remained a loose collection of thoughts and ideas. Beginning with this post, I am going to take my past and future potential essays out of my Moleskines, complete them, and publish them here.
The decision to begin publishing essays on my site is not one that I came to without careful consideration. Even with all the popularity of blogging, I have not really gotten into it. I’ve tried on numerous occasions to start a blog but I just never kept up with it. And, it’s not because I’m a lazy or undisciplined writer (I have collections of notebooks to prove otherwise). Because of these false starts at blogging, I have thought quite a bit about what it means to write in public, the benefits and drawbacks of doing so, and the different ways that it can be done.
In my line of work (tech startups), blogging has become almost a requirement. Or at least that is the perception. I don’t necessarily agree with this position and I’m not starting to publish my writing online for this reason. I am a voracious reader of blogs and I cannot thank my favorite bloggers enough for what they do. I believe that one of the, if not the, greatest facets of the internet is the ability of everyone to have a voice and to express their opinions. I think though that there are different ways of doing this.
For me, publishing my essays online is about voicing my opinion and contributing to the conversation. Before deciding to do this though, I thought about what type of content I will enjoy putting online, the method that fits my style, and what may actually be interesting to people. After going through these considerations, I decided that blogging isn’t for me. In my opinion, blogging is writing on frequent basis (at least once or twice a week) about current topics or events. Instead, I will be taking a cue from Paul Graham and will be publishing longer essays less frequently on a wide variety of topics. These essays may be written spur of the moment or I may work on them for days or even weeks. They may be about startups, politics, or anything in-between. I may publish one every week or I many not publish one for a month. Part of what I like about the idea of essays is this flexibility. With blogs I tended to feel forced to write frequently and about certain topics but, at least for me, the essay form is less confining. Perhaps this is because there is less of a perception about what essays should be like as compared to blogs. I think this is part of why some people have recently picked up writing newsletters. There is less formality about what should be included in a newletters and therefore it gives the author more options.
There are few reasons why I think publishing essays is the form of public writing that better works for me. As I mentioned, I really enjoy writing long hand in a Moleskine notebook and these have become sort of my “analog blog”. What I write in my notebook is what I would put on a blog and frankly I don’t want to write the same thing twice. A simple solution seems to be bypass the notebooks and put everything straight onto a blog. For me personally these are two very different experiences and cannot be substituted. I really like the idea of continuing the tradition of commonplaces and it is something that I don’t think can be completely replicated on a blog. As compared to blogging, I think there is something fundamentally different about the experience of opening a book filled with all sorts of thoughts and notes, finding a blank page, and slowly writing out what is on your mind. Fred Wilson has a blog post about how he uses his blog as an online commonplace book. He cites two advantages of doing this online versus in a notebook. One is the increased ability to find entries and organize posts and the other is the benefit of seeing other people’s opinions and comments. As for organization and search, this increased structure limits the types of entries and the flexibility with which you can write. I value this flexibility over the ability to find things. Besides, when looking for something I tend to stumble across other entries and this process of meandering through my past thoughts is quite fun. The differences, some obvious and some subtle, between the process and experience of writing by hand in a notebook and writing on a blog are important enough to me that I prefer doing the majority of my writing in a Moleskine notebook.
Fred’s point though about being able to share your opinions and hear others’ thoughts on topics you find interesting is something that do miss by writing privately. And, as I said, this is the main driver behind my decision to begin publishing some essays online. However, I don’t think this means that I, or anyone else, should necessarily begin blogging. I think this is a personal decision and should take into account a number of factors. In the process of determining the best way voice my opinions online, I decided that the topics I would be blogging about are already being written about extensively and by people who, for the most part, share my opinions. Therefore, it was my decision that I would not be adding much value to the overall conversation taking place online by blogging, as I’ve defined it. Also, with the development of lighter tools such as Twitter I can still voice my opinions on current topics without keeping a regular blog. What is so exciting to me about Twitter is that they have lowered the bar to creating and maintaining a voice online which has in turn increased participation. Similarly, the development of robust commenting services like Disqus has made it incredibly easy to join the conversations happening on your favorite blogs. For me, the combination of Twitter and commenting gives me the level of engagement that I am looking for when it comes to voicing my opinions about current topics and participating in the ongoing conversations happening online.
I think the main conclusion I came to when deciding the best way for me to write in public was that there are different ways to achieve this end and the channels and methods one uses should be chosen for a reason. For me, writing essays fits better with my preferences, what I enjoy writing about, and what I think people will be interested in reading. Between these essays, my Twitter profile, and commenting on interesting blog posts I feel that I am voicing my opinions and being part of the conversation in a way that is appropriate for me. The first essay I published online was the postmortem analysis of my first startup. The reaction I received and the people I spoke with after putting it online is what really convinced me that I should find a way to more actively write in public. I think it something that everyone should do but I don’t think it is a one size fits all situation. With all the different tools available today everyone can find the channel or channels that they prefer using. Each allows for its own level of expression and engagement but I don’t think one way is necessarily the right way. I think it is the coolest thing that anyone can have their own printing press these days and I hope that everyone takes advantage of this incredible capability in a way that is as unique to them as the opinions and ideas they choose to express.