{"id":161,"date":"2008-08-20T16:04:49","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T20:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/?p=161"},"modified":"2008-08-20T16:06:09","modified_gmt":"2008-08-20T20:06:09","slug":"blogs-and-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/blogs-and-block\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogs and block"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend G. pointed me toward this post<\/a> at Merlin Mann<\/a>‘s 43 Folders<\/a>, on the makings of a good blog. I don’t know if I qualify as “trying” so much lately, but earlier this summer I did work hard on meeting the “good blogs are in paragraphs” criteria. And I’m definitely obsessed (and probably weird), to the benefit of my four loyal readers, who I hope are learning a lot about the folkways of northern Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

In case you haven’t noticed I’ve been posting a lot of photos, as I’m having a little trouble with words. This is true both online and off. So it’s not surprising that, after getting schooled on successful blogging, I drifted to\u00a0the post above it<\/a>. G. informs me that Mann is a “geek hero,” which explains why I’ve never heard of him. But his advice is universal, useful to geeks and idiots alike.<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/p>\n

“Most all makers with longevity talk about\u00a0a process<\/a>\u00a0that involves regular, scheduled work periods that allow generous time for warmups and getting into what Csikszentmihalyi himself has called, \u201cFlow<\/a>.\u201d For as long as he or she can stay in that Flow state, a good artist is capable of synthesizing unbelievably disparate material and ideas in a way that\u2019s often satisfying\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0productive. For those who cannot, it means another morning of video games, Facebook, and binge eating.<\/p>\n

Artists who are in the early\u00a0draft<\/em>\u00a0stage of a given project tend to adopt a generative attitude about capturing and accepting\u00a0whatever shows up<\/a>\u00a0without judgment or self-editing \u2014 having a\u00a0gentle attitude\u00a0<\/a>about imperfection that gives \u201cbad\u201d or \u201cincomplete\u201d ideas the same wide berth as the the apparently-great ones.<\/p>\n

This is not stressful for the gifted artist who knows the dirty little secret that\u00a0nobody shits a masterpiece<\/em>; it\u2019s all about editing, re-writing, and shaping the raw materials into something that will eventually become whole, polished, and cohesive. Eventually. But, first, you have to get\u00a0something<\/em>\u00a0down. And that\u2019s where that supposed \u201cparadox\u201d sure comes in handy.”<\/p>\n

[\/snip]<\/p>\n

I don’t have Nintendo, but that Facebook-and-binge-eating part of the “creative process” sure sounds familiar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend G. pointed me toward this post at Merlin Mann‘s 43 Folders, on the makings of a good blog. I don’t know if I qualify as “trying” so much lately, but earlier this summer I did work hard on meeting the “good blogs are in paragraphs” criteria. And I’m definitely obsessed (and probably weird), … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}