The Writer’s Lament: Should Everyone Write a Blog?

Here's a repost from the past. 

Writing is like sex. When you get the impulse to do it, you’re seldom in the right place, and when the atmosphere is sublime, you might not be in the mood. I suspect this accounts for the vast number of unsatisfying blogs written every day across America. 

So goes my theory about the mysterious impulses of the mind and body. Blogging is a mystery to me, a modern curiosity that is trying to find its place in the history of mankind’s literary arts. The percentage of people who write a blog is growing every day, and it's changing the art of the word.

I’m coming to understand the art of blogging as a hybrid of inclination, narcissism, and curiosity. Do I come to my screen as the ancients did with a quill, looking to shape and frame an idea, a thesis, an ideology? Does the spontaneity of the medium favor only freshly baked insights, or is it all right to offer the timeless truths of an essayist? Am I truly a writer—or am I, as they say, merely a Cat Blogger, someone who enjoys telling you that my cat did such and such today with the profound assurance that someone cares? (Cat Bloggers, by the way, aren’t new; they’ve been around for centuries, but their daily rhapsodies were mercifully trapped in little diaries with cheap aluminum keys).

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Our Addiction to Public Communication

I wrote a new technology piece in Relevant magazine’s September/October issue, entitled “Short Attention Span Faith.” You can read the whole thing by clicking here, but here’s a short little excerpt:

Unsurprisingly, this frenzied, obsessive-compulsive proclivity toward being digital busybodies has deleterious effects on Christian disciplines like Bible study and prayer. How do we justify sitting down and praying for an hour when there are Hulu videos to browse, “What Ninja Turtle are you?” quizzes to take, and online “community” to cultivate? If we’re not wired, plugged-in, and communicating with the world at all times, it seems like such a waste of time…

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Hangin with LosWhit of RagamuffinSoul.com

Carlos Whittaker's blog, RagamuffinSoul.com reaches more than 7,000 people a day. The guy is on the front lines of the church and its role in a web-driven culture.  He's the Director of Service Programming at Buckhead Church which is one of the three North Point Community Church campuses in the Atlanta area.  He oversees all the Sunday adult experience and design and directly oversees all areas Hosting, Production, Creative, Video, Music, and Programming at Buckhead Church.  He also sits on the creative sermon planning team for Andy Stanley.

..More importantly, from the little I've interacted with him he's a great guy who loves Jesus and seeks the best for His people.

Yesterday was a crazy day for both of us, but we managed to find some time to talk (him from a Starbucks in Georgia and me from my office in California) and via the sweet technology of iChat video. Take a look:

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