Should I blog more?

One of the most brilliant people I know has been telling me for some time that I should blog more often, since I obviously have lots of interesting things to say about, well, the sort of stuff that's featured on the Intelligent Singaporean daily. Actually, believe it or not, I don't. Oh, I have political opinions all right. I just don't think they're particularly blog-worthy most of the time. Most of my views tend to toe the left-liberal line, at least when it comes to local politics -- and there plenty of diligent and smart Singaporean libertarians out there that you can and should read first. I'll venture into politics when I think I do have something to say. In the meantime, I'll limit my commentary to stuff that I care and know about, like literature and history and education. (As for my personal life -- well, it's not that happening. In case you're wondering, I'm single and available. If you enjoy talking about European history, Liverpool Football Club, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and T. S. Eliot's poetry, drop me a line.)

Two other obstacles stand in the way of my blogging. One is time. I just don't have much of it these days. My Practicum starts on Monday, and I'll be knee-deep in lesson plans before very long. When I do have free time, I'll probably be reading Jacques Barzun to keep me sane. Reading is always ahead of blogging in my list of priorities.

Second, I'm a really, really slow writer. A lot of people think that I write well and therefore assume that I write quickly, but if I do write well, it's because I'm a verbal perfectionist who agonises over every word, sentence, and paragraph and loathes having to rewrite anything. In the spirit of the essay, I also write in order to figure out something that I think I know, to test and straighten out half-formed thoughts and not to verbalise fully-formed ones. That invariably entails a lot of backtracking and revising. Very often I abandon posts halfway because I don't think I'm getting anywhere, or because I realise that I don't really know much about the topic and need to spend more time reading about it first.

Apropos of writing, I have some thoughts on writing that I should look to turn into a blog post sooner or later. Don't hold your breath about it though.
Posted by kungfuzi at 11:13 pm |