jill/txt

Friday: February 27, 2004

required narrativity

Diane's analysis of diet blogs (Feb 25) says a lot about blogs and narrative in general. Perhaps blogs require a narrative of change: "Once you're no longer fitting into the category of "on a diet," which has a built-in narrative structure, it can be hard to find a satisfying new story to tell yourself about who you are." Perhaps life does. Or perhaps it's simply the project blog (1, 2, 3), the makeover blog that requires change, whereas other blogs can be told from a position of stasis.

Now I'm done with the PhD, which certainly used to be a major thread in the narrative of this blog, is my blog less about change and progress, or have I merely substituted other goals and adventures? My "This season on Jill/txt" suggests the latter, a need for plot.

Posted by Jill at February 27, 2004 09:17 AM.

Trackbacks

On February 28, 2004 12:52 PM, the entry "other" at Weez Blog linked to this entry.

Excerpt: This daily writing thing... (She shakes her head). In sleeplessness, the archives were read bottom up, chronologically. The experience was not unlike fiction. My words have become other, and have their own life apart from me. Where I am now...... [read more]

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Comments

On March 1, 2004 12:19 PM Jesper Juul wrote:

You've clearly moved into a more poetic mode recently, which is not bad. Isn't the poetic underrated these days?

On March 1, 2004 03:13 PM Francois Lachance wrote:

Have you really changed? Or has your intended audience changed? You seem to be blogging for your students. I mean that "for" in a large sense. You are blogging their accomplishments, aspirations as well as items that may be of interest to them.

make sense ??

On March 2, 2004 06:48 PM Jill wrote:

Do you think I'm writing for my students, Francois? It doesn't feel like that, though I'm certainly writing with an awareness that students will be among the readers. And I'm thinking a lot about teaching these days. Mind you, even if all my students read this blog regularly, and I doubt they do, they'd still only be a fraction of the readership. My mum is at least as important a potential reader in my mind ;)

Jesper, I like poetic. I like that there can be more, different ways of blogging. And I like mixing them all up into one blog. Might be confusing, but it works for me!

On March 3, 2004 04:22 PM Francois Lachance wrote:

I like how you put it "with students in mind". I've also noticed more use of images to initiate a blog entry. Some of this may be related to travel (and the time your schedule allows for writing. These may be related or unrelated factors. I also want to throw into the mix the seasonal tug of light as the northern hemisphere approaches the equinox. A theory to test on a sampling of blog entries: the darkness of winter is word prone and the light of spring image inspiring -- of course it is a theory that goes to pot when one considers that the blog author can draw upon an archive of stored images in winter and in summer yank a chunk or two of verbal text. Still there may be a yearly cycle to blogging ...

On March 3, 2004 05:04 PM Jill wrote:

I don't know, but it is AMAZING that it's still light and it's past five pm. I've got more than an HOUR before it'll be dark!

Yay!