Milinda’s Questions

Several years ago, on my predecessor blog, I linked to this piece at A List Apart entitled Ten Rules for Writing for the Living Web. Even during the times when I’ve blogged a whole lot more regularly than I do now, I probably didn’t follow most of these rules very faithfully, and in this blog’s present moribund state, every single one of them is a standing indictment. In an effort at self-chastisement and motivation, I reproduce the Ten Rules here:

1. Write for a reason

2. Write often

3. Write tight

4. Make good friends

5. Find good enemies

6. Let the story unfold

7. Stand up, speak out

8. Be sexy

9. Use your archives

10. Relax!

Obviously, the rule I’ve most flagrantly violated is #2: Write often. Under this rubric, here’s what Mark Bernstein, composer of the Rules, has to say:

I heard B. F. Skinner remark that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about book every year, which he suggested was as much writing as anyone should indulge. You don’t need to write much, but you must write, and write often.

If you don’t write for a few days, you are unfaithful to the readers who come to visit. Missing an update is a small thing – rudeness, not betrayal – and readers will excuse the occasional lapse.

If you are inconsistent, readers will conclude you are untrustworthy. If you are absent, readers will conclude you are gone. It’s better to keep religiously to a once-a-week, or once-a-fortnight schedule, than to go dark mysteriously.

As much in sympathy as I am with most of these remarks, I have to say that B. F. Skinner’s remark here is (as with most of Skinner’s ideas), flat wrong, and stupidly so. It is true that fifteen minutes of writing a day adds up to about book every year IF one writes on the same subject every day, and IF what one writes on day n+1 has some continuity with what one writes on day n (those are separate conditions, BTW), and IF one comes to some sort of conclusion at the end of the year and IF one does virtually no rewriting. (Believe me, I know; I spent far more than 15 minutes a day, for far more than a year, working on my ill-fated dissertation.)

But Bernstein’s own remarks are all well-taken, and I am certain that my own slothful and erratic habits have driven away whatever readers I once had. The suggestion about posting religiously every week or every two weeks is a good one; perhaps I should set it as a goal to post something worth saying every two weeks, with shorter fillers (the kind of things Roger used to call “remora“) posted erratically in between.