I’ve been invited to blog at a site where they want me to “submit” stuff to them via email or attached documents and they will use the blogging software to post my thoughts.
I know it makes sense for them. And I know on this blog, at Tom Peters.com, some of our contributors prefer working that way. But as for me, it drives me crazy!
I’ve found every time I get ready to blog something for this new site I’ve been invited to join—and they are, btw, lovely folks pushing a cause near and dear to my heart and I WANT to blog for them—I can’t stand NOT having access to the software myself.
I want to be “hands-on” with the tools—especially because they are so easy to use and because I’ve gotten in the habit of editing and shaping the text myself, looking at it in “preview” mode, playing with it, moving paragraphs around, actually using it to be creative.
The blogging tools themselves seem to me to be an integral part of the creative process of writing now. In fact, when I have to write in a word processing format, it feels dead to me—not alive like blogging software does. And in word processing I don’t “speak” the same way. It makes me feel formal and stuffy, not fresh and quick.
Word processing sounds like a “memo” to me and feels as if it lives up on a dusty shelf. Blogging feels like it’s part of a “turned on” network. Does the medium really shape all messages?