Inside View: My Next 5000 Blog Posts

MY NEXT 5000 BLOG posts recorded on my blog will happen in less than six years because I'm harvesting and aggregating my legacy content onto www.insideview.ie since I trust Six Apart with my content. A lot of my legacy content sits unread in small Moleskines like the ones at left. I'm also searching out prolific scribes, hoping to learn how to write better. From past interactions with long-time readers of my blog, I know I could benefit by not being so obtuse. I'm going to try to cut out rambling thoughts and when I don't recognise a ramgling thought, I'm going to delete all the verbs. Over the past three years, while listening to guest lecturers who have visited my creative multimedia classrooms in Tipperary Institute, I have learned that I am asking students to create content that is too long. I started in 2002 by imposing 3000-word essays, due at the end of the academic year. Now I'm happy to get 140 character captions at the end of a one-hour lecture, five word headlines during a tutorial session and 250 word synopses from students recorded on Moodle. The end result: more than 3000 original words in the same space of time as the original tasking.

I tell first year students that they should scribble down everything they can in the set time period, then cut it down to the stuff they really want to share. And then they edit their work but cutting it down to everything they actually need to write.

Unlike other web properties I've had on Blogger, Radio Userland, Live Journal and MovableType, I have never felt I could walk away from this weblog. It's become my turf and the voice heard at Inside View is mine and mine alone. Some readers trust my voice while others would rather go somewhere better suited to their tastes or to their interests.

I remember the first original oratory that I wrote. It was in the mid-1960s. I transcribed every word spoken by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy at his inaugaration. And then I spoke every syllable in his Massachusetts accent. His written text spoke to me in my mind. I had written what I had spoken.

At the end of this current year, I believe some of the content on this blog will be my spoken word, transcribed by Dragon Naturally Speaking, edited by me, and published on this blog. If you're interested, you should check back in mid-December and see if there's a category called "spoken" as a part of Inside View. It should be interesting listening on iTunes or a quick read here.

Previously: "10 Factors Behind my 5000 Blog Posts"