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[Update: by the looks of things, graduate life is a constant scramble to meet yesterday's deadlines. Probably I will not have much time over the next few months to post on this blog, except on topics directly related to my studies.]
Subject-wise, the writing on this blog over the next little while will be the same as it has been over the last little while ie. odds and ends. Style-wise, it may change: I'll make an effort towards brevity. Or rather, I will yield to the temptation of failing to spend hours writing long and ponderous essays on obscure topics.
This is not as easy a decision as it looks; but nor is it very hard. On the one hand, I quite like the idea of being an earnest long-winded scholar who shuns worldly delights in service of the wordy exposition of minutiae. On other hand, I would like people to read this blog. (And worldly delights are, after all, delightful).
My first act of popularist summarizing is to condense all of my bloated introductions into a single easy-to-read no-nonsense pocket of information. And here it is.
The jury is out on the merit, readership-wise, of writing odds and ends. I've heard that success in blogging is impossible without a fairly narrow and consistent subject matter. But surely there is something to gain from appealing to a wide audience. At any rate, I'll give top priority to what appeals to me. Thanks to the people who have left comments behind so far.
3 comments:
I've enjoyed reading your blog over the past while. While specialization might appeal to some readers, I like the variety of topics you cover and the mixture of different kinds of writing.
"But surely there is something to gain from appealing to a wide audience." I have yet to see one iota of evidence that this is the case, with the sole exception that you can, at times, wield power over more people if you appeal to more people instead of less.
I remain unconvinced by this argument, however: wielding power over large numbers of people is almost never a good idea, and smaller numbers are a lot more fun anyway.
Besides that, I think your idiosyncrasies are your most charming qualities. You specifically, I mean, not people in general. While I'm not by any means trying to provide discouragement against experiments and additions and changes to your style and content, I don't want you to try them because you think there's something wrong with what you're doing as it stands now.
Yes, postgrad study is like that. I know that this has been a bad year for me writing much that is not my thesis. As I said though, your blog has been good reading!
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