Change of Routine

Maybe you've noticed a change in the tone of the posts recently? Ever since that sleepless night a couple of weeks ago, I've decided not to blog "live" as I have been for years now. It occurred to me that developing an idea for immediate publication, while good discipline, was simply too intellectually demanding. Especially for a blog post. Ever since, I've been dashing off my blog posts whenever I feel like it, free-writing them, if you will, and saving them as drafts. A few days later I go back to them edit them for publication. Then I schedule them to post at 7:00AM on some available day in the future. (I'm about four posts ahead as I write this.)

I don't recommend writing scholarly prose in this spontaneous way. All my advice about knowing what you are going to say the day before you are going to say it still holds. In fact, I'm using that half hour in the mornings now to write a scholarly article. This is something I really should have done a long time ago. My authorial "persona" has become too blogging-oriented. Highly disciplined, yes, but not capable of writing a series of coherent paragraphs that develops an idea for a knowledgeable, intelligent reader within a particular discipline. I've been writing for highly intelligent, knowledgeable readers, to be sure, but not about the things they are actually thinking about. This has weakened an important side of my prose.

My plan for next year is to rediscover the scholar that I got cold feet about becoming about a year and half ago. (Has it been that long?) It may be too late, of course. But let's see. Let's see.