February 20, 2004

Not only does Heather dislike the environment — “we shouldn’t sacrificed our standard of living,” she said — but she also has strong feelings about my blog. This was enough to start a heated conversation on MSN last night.

Heatha: your blogs are intimate for you, nobody else
Tudor: you can’t sense … intimacy?
Heatha: no, not at all
Tudor: how strange you are ….
Heatha: your blogs all read the same. the same type of style. there is no depth. you gloss over subject matter to make way for a few catch phrases

Catch phrases? Lack of depth?! Outraged, I moved my fingers over the keyboard with angry and brilliant eloquence. “QEROPUSD ;KLJWETROPIU 13b 4!!#@$,” I typed.

It took me a couple of startled seconds to calm down and retype my message. “No, I don’t think I overuse clichés,” I wrote somewhat more civilly. She was forcing me to explain my writing, and I don’t think I sounded either convincing or genuine.

I tried to explain to her that writing for the web is significantly different from any other type of writing, and thus it requires a new approach and a new style. People skim through webpages without actually reading them, and even then some fuckers will still complain about boredom. The only way to keep readers happy, I argued, is to use a simple, journalistic style.

And yes, it takes both style and effort to take complex, personal stories and to crystallize them into a single, uncomplicated entry. It also takes restraint and understatement, and I’ve been struggling with these concepts ever since I started my blog. I don’t want to tell people about my life — I want to show them what’s happening with vivid imagery, and thus give them something concrete to hang on to.

It’s easy to write sentimental platitudes, but sometimes it’s nearly impossible to create a crisp image using nothing more than words — that’s why I sometimes cheat and use a camera.

But even though I had all these explanations swarming to escape through my fingers, last night I only managed fumble my words when talking to Heather. “It’s all about style,” I wanted to shout, but that sounded too cliche.