Tipping Our Hat to Great Work
My friend, the wordsmith and writing teacher Maria Shine Stewart, an occasional commenter here, serves up these lovely thoughts on her Word Sanctuary blog. The marvelous quote from Rilke is merely a bonus. Meanwhile Christine Borne, one-time "gen-next librarian" and recently relocated to Cleveland from New York, offers this fine post, one of the best examples of true citizen journalism I've seen in the local blogs in quite some time. Her blog has an equally wonderful and evocative name, Really Bad Cleveland Accent. I highly recommend each of these wonderful blogs and the thoughtful writers behind them.
6 Comments:
John,
I've been reading your blog since I got my high speed internet connection a couple of months ago. Today you gave me the link to Christine Borne's blog. Wow, I left two comments on two of her posts. Thank your for the places you send me. They make me think, and react.
Rene
Glad to hear about your fast connection (which sure makes for a nicer web experience) and doubly glad Christine's blog makes you say "wow." I have that same thought as I read her stuff. Good for you for joining her conversation, and thanks for doing the same here. And unless you tell me otherwise, I'll guess this might be my long-lost west side friend Rene D, no?
No, John, I'm Rene K. I've heard you speak at the writer's conference at Lakeland, and you know my son, Dustin. I'm trying to blog, but not doing it as often as I can. I'm reading lots of blogs, and find many of them interesting and thought provoking.
Rene
Oh, that Rene. So glad you're stopping by here, and do please share the link for your blog, if you're so moved to do so. I'd love to check it out. Please do say hello to Dustin for me, and I'll be sure to continue to keep you in mind as I add new links to sites I think are worthwhile.
John: Thank you for your positive thoughts! My entries are sometimes essay-length. That may deter some readers. But: "If I don't write for myself, whom should I write for? And if I write for myself alone, then what am I? And if not now, when?" (with apologies to Rabbi Hillel)
You said it, Maria. And when it comes to length, I think it's fair to say most readers are more concerned with quality than quantity (i.e., length). We've all read long books that we hoped would never end, and gladly followed the story over hundreds of pages. And I'm sure most people have also read (or at least began to read) 500-word articles that bored them to tears after the first couple sentences. Just engage your reader, and everything else takes care of itself. And as you rightly note, if you're not engaged yourself as the writer, why would the reader have any cause to be?
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