events/2024-07-01-writing

Participants

• User:Thoughts.uncountable.uk (Chris)
• Sara Jakša
• Tracy Durnell
• Al Abut
• capjamesg
• Tantek Çelik
• Nick Simson

Notes

• The carnival
  • James published the IndieWeb carnival for this month: https://jamesg.blog/2024/07/01/indieweb-carnival-tools/
  • Artocalypse Blog Carnival for this month : https://thoughts.uncountable.uk/artocalypse-blog-carnival-july-2024-my-digital-art-journey/
  • Some carnival allow submission in Google Drive documents and social media as well - to get more people to participate
• Tools
  • Quills need to be sharpened as well
• writing for a multinational audience -- choosing idioms, language
  • langauge influence the idioms, experession,...
  • "accent" of writing -- idioms, language, approach, tone reveal influences, places we're from
  • personality online -- how is it different from in-person personality?
    • Personality is place/space/context dependent - the online writing we do not know who is reading and it is hard to adapt without a feedback, writting for LinkedIn can be like writting for the algoritm vs. writting for people on the blog -- platforms have vibes
• Sara: "I want to be weirder"
• Some webpages on the internet are more of an art than a website - being on the web also includes linking in and out
• deciding what to publish is linked to what we want our blog personality to be
• James: "Writing is not the same as publishing."
  • It is easier to write under a different name or without publishing when learning somnething like a poetry
  • There can be also value in pausing when we write something
• Chris: "I want to write things that will last 200 years."
  • What is the value of the documentation in the blog, when the system changes|? (A lot!), Who will read it in 200 years? For the first time, we have the chance to have the impressions from noraml people saved
• Chris: "HTML will be like Latin for the future and all recorded history."
• "Medium is Substack 1.0"
• https://svbtle.com/about
• Al: "Things are made by people just like you."
  • Chris describes the wonder that 8 year olds feels when they use dev tools to change the color of a page.
  • Steve Jobs quote: "

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you." https://absentofi.org/2019/09/steve-jobs-everything-around-you-that-you-call-life-was-made-up-by-people-that-were-no-smarter-than-you/

• Sara: Historically, very few people used to write anything at all.
  • Al: "reading books used to be controversial with outrage about the habit trapping young people indoors"
  • James: "They even used to say the crossword puzzle was too dangerous because people will not focus on their surroundings"
• Technology has been harmful in the past in some very clear instances
  • Radium used as backlighting of clocks
  • Social media amplifying exteremism
• echo-chambers different from amplifying extremism
• What is the difference between social media and blogging?
• Archives can be used to remind ourselves both of what we did and what we were thnking about and to remind ourselves, that people don't post everything on the end (generally just the positive highs)
• Do you write the stuff, that would be helpful to other people, but would hurt you or make you sad? What prevales?
• The stuff from the past (where conversation moved on) can be just as interesting and relevant
• what are the things that are hard for us to write about? grief, mental health...
• look to blogging 'role models' for how to mix types of content
  • https://zeldman.com/ (especially archives)
• treating posts more like a wiki by not showing dates so they can be evolving posts
• When starting in the 1990s, there were no titles in the blog posts (there was just one text box), and they were posted on the same page, with the fragment link
• what do you read before you write? social media UI pretty much "forces" you to read before you write. but is that actually good for your writing?
• An idea for a social UI: "write first" to unlock your feed.
• the pressure that tools put on us about what we write / make -- both social media and blogging software
• Does the blogsphere have the vibe? Not at the whole, it has became too big for there to be the cool kids table. There can be individial vibes or the small groups vibes - none of the dominate
• https://openmentions.com/
• distinction in how writing process works between creative writing, non-fiction, and blogging / online writing
• Al: blogging is inherently counterculture and so is writing in general
  • "Historians are just writers that wanted the last word." from Chaos Monkeys, a book on creating FB's ad business.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Monkeys

“Paper, it's like the vinyl of reading.” — Al

• https://www.thejaymo.net/zine/ - example of quarterly zine as alternative to newsletter

JPG Magazine #14 was the issue that published the original "Disaster Girl" photo before it became an internet meme

• https://www.ystrickler.com/the-dark-forest-anthology-of-the-internet/ (second edition: https://darkforest.metalabel.com/dfa2)

• James has been thinking about the "weight" of words. Slightly different words can have such different meaning.
  • Tracy: has a really interesting thesaurus, Roget's Thesaurus. The version you want is Bartlett's, free download on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/bartlettsrogetst0000unse
  • "You're probably using the wrong dictionary" https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
  • The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, a book on the language of science fiction: https://www.amazon.com/Jewel-Hinged-Jaw-Language-Science-Fiction/dp/081956883X
    • "About 5,750 Words" -- essay on the value of each word
  • Tantek: try to capture tools you use for writing on the wiki: writing (in a new "Tools" section!)
  • Tracy's book recommendation for writing fiction: Story Genius https://www.amazon.com/Story-Genius-Science-Outlining-Riveting/dp/1607748894

• James: which texts have influenced your writing? E.g. the Chicago Style Manual.
  • Al: book on grammar: Eats, Shoots & Leaves https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038
  • Sara's recommendation on screenwriting: https://www.alistairowenwriter.com/story-and-character
• ... add notes

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