I accidentally started another listen-through of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, one of my favorite books. Once again I am confronted with the weaknesses I share with the titular characters:
“Oh!” said Strange. “I think that the quicker one gets these things out of one’s brain and off to the printers, the better. I dare say, sir,” and he smiled at Mr. Norrell in a friendly manner, “that you find the same.”
Mr. Norrell, who had never yet got any thing successfully out of his brain and off to the printers, whose every attempt was still at some stage or other of revision, said nothing.
I am reminded how much I would like to see myself doing writing, not just making tools for writing and designs for writing. My tools are in good shape; I should start using them more often.
It’s tricky, from a design point of view, that the things I think I want to publish are sometimes an essay with a title, and sometimes a paragraph of something maybe just barely worth saying. But not having room for those little paragraphs means I’m losing some good stuff, and I rarely have time to do the essay thing in a way that’s up to my Norrelite standards. So I took some time to crack the design piece and I’m pretty happy with it.
I used to hate the word “blog”. I also used to be a prescriptivist.