The best blog I follow is written by Dru Marland. She has an unbeatable formula. She does distinctive and interesting things, then writes them up in a distinctive and interesting way.
I don’t know many writers who spend their days swimming the River Avon or photographing storms from the Bristol rooftops. The writers are writing, a repetitive action with a limited core of intrigue.
Got any photos to go with that? The desk, the wall, the page. We’re done.
Dru illustrates her blog with her own photographs. These are unique to her site, adding another good reason to go there. Dru was the first person to point out to me, I think correctly, that blogs are an image-led format. Many of the more entertaining blogs are extended captions to intriguing images.
Writers can make the mistake of thinking it’s all about the words. That’s what we’ve trained ourselves to think, and we’re in the habit of working up our sentences. There’s a reluctance to ship out a blog that hasn’t been honed in the same way as any other piece destined for publication. Honing takes time, and effort, but Twitter might be different. It’s shorter.
I feel confident about honing statements or questions of 140 characters or fewer. I don’t stand to lose too much time or sleep. And there are no pictures. Truly, the tweet may be the more literary medium of the two.
I don’t lose sleep, but I do lose time arranging my 140 characters in the most elegant way. Composing tweets reminds me of the advertising straplines I once wrote for a living.
As for no pictures – many’s the time I’ve twitpic’d new purchases.
140 characters in search of an author, indeed….
Yes, Kate, but I don’t have to look at your pictured purchases unless I really want to. You had to look at my cartoon.
Dru, this is how you do your replies so I imagine this is how it’s done.
The equivalent of two tweets. Why mix the media?