I’m sure most folks who find themselves here (stop that! Go out and plant a tree, or something) have already seen David Greenberg’s piece on guest-blogging, which should be of great interest to those of us who are current grateful short-term tenants here. Not a bad piece. He is certainly right that one watches anxiously for comments, because they are a rough indication that one is being read (a very rough indication: I have heard from folks who I had no idea were reading my stuff). Yet they can be consuming. This is a good thing: it’s good to have to clarify, to defend yourself, and even to correct yourself. The question is, how much time should one put into responding to comments? I find myself wanting to respond to comments. After all, I wouldn’t have posted on the subject in the first place if I wasn’t interested. And even when comments are antagonistic, that doesn’t mean they’re not smart and good, and of course you want show respect for those readers by responding to them. And so you find that suddenly it is 5 pm and you still have 60 exams to grade. In any event, it’s worth the read. Some kind of happy medium is called for — although, given the writing compulsion that is necessary to blog successfully, I’m not sure the blogosphere is the home of the happy medium.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on May 19, 2005 at 05:06 PM