James Metcalf on the fictionality of the latest archaeological page-turners
Stephen Puddicombe looks at the unusual appeal of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Ciaran Rafferty investigates the science of book classification
As anyone who has ever succumbed to LiveJournal will know, blogging is hard. Having to occasionally concoct a half-baked idea for this blog is the bane of my life.
Go one way, and it’s too self indulgent, go the other and it’s all posing silly questions and writing puffed-up mini-essays on the history of film. The power of being allowed to write about whatever you want is hideous: intoxicating (i.e. I can write about wanting to be in S Club 8 and it will be on the internet!), yet deadly (Oh God, I just wrote a thousand words on wanting to be in S Club 8 and it’s rubbish and I have to think of a new topic for next time which will also be rubbish).
If you have a LiveJournal you are probably sixteen and write about why you hate your life. If you have a blogspot you are probably an ‘aspiring journalist’ or someone with ‘something to say’. As you can see, with no topic and no prescribed deadline, this is difficult territory.
The way I see it, Chris Killen’s blog provides a beautiful example of how a good blog works, not that everyone’s blog should be identical. But they should not function as a ridiculous teenage diary replete with Smiths lyrics and ‘thoughts’ and – worse still – ‘feelings’ should be handled with care. The problem endemic within bad blogs seems to be that the novelty of having a blank wall you can scribble anything upon is overwhelming. It is natural to want to fill it and fill it fast. Killen’s, on the other hand, comes across as considered and gentle. He types carelessly and honestly, without obsessive punctuation or grammar. What is so brilliant is that he uses blogs for what they were probably intended; to communicate his life and the things he likes. It seems a shame that I was so surprised by it.
Despite the fact he is about to publish his first novel, The Bird Room, in spring 2009, his blog is without pomp or ego. It is not self-consciously ‘literary’. It is possibly by writing only about his work, and his work with other people, or his band that Killen avoids the chasm that so many of us with a blog fall in to. Killen seems to understand his medium very well; fusing his photographs and passages of fiction with little explanations, and linking the reader to the surreal videos he makes, Killen never allows the reader to stagnate. Having a blog it is very easy to talk about yourself, but talking about what you do seems much harder.
As the average student, the chances are that you don’t do anything nearly this interesting. Perhaps being snobby about who is qualified to write holds some weight here. Without any creativity there is no need for a creative outlet. The internet, if I believe what I am told, is slowly crushing, melting under its own weight. Overloaded with uninspiring html and angsty blogs, the copper wires that we use are increasingly unable to cope. The transience of the internet allows for the feeling that whatever you write doesn’t matter. You can go forwards or back and the page of type disappears .
Possibly, looking at Killen’s blog, the secret to a good blog is revealed: having a good life, getting off the internet and doing things that other people don’t do but might want to read about. Spend your time. Even if it is spent making video on how to make a miniature swan or launching an eight-word novel. Possibly.
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