A Little More on Outlines
I'm going to continue writing for a few moments on the idea from this post on outlines yesterday.
Prof. Lawley wrote about the objections to the idea that blogs are outlines, pointing out that people can use many forms of writing in their blogs, and that outlining as a writing procedure does not lend itself well to many of the forms that they might choose. "Outliners impose a specific structure on writing. They produce clear boundaries between sections, and between what's 'in' the writing and what's 'out.' . . . But I wouldn't use an outline for a poem. Or for an e-mail message to a friend. I don't use one for my blogging."
Though outlining as a writing technique lacks universal utility, forms of writing that have not been created using an outlining process still represent some kind of organization of ideas. The writing technique of outlining helps people writing in certain forms organize the ideas that they want to express. It's just a technique, but the goal is to create organized expression on the page. Outlining techniques are probably most useful in organizing long non-fiction works with lots of complicated ideas. However, even though one might not use that technique to organize the ideas in a poem, many forms of weblog, or a story, those forms of writing still possess organization. The 'rules' of organization may vary from form to form, and can themselves become objects of creativity. Still, few ideas fit conveniently into a single sentence or line of verse. If we think of an outline as describing the order of and relationships between ideas within a piece of writing, then most forms of writing that wander beyond a few sentences or lines probably have outlines at some level of abstraction.
This doesn't help to explain or reshape Doc's assertion that "Blogs are outlines, and blogging is a form of outlining." If he meant that all blogs are derived from or represent outlines such as those used to write long non-fictional papers, he's probably wrong. Though many people carefully organize their blog entries, not everyone does, and some use blogs for more free-form writing. Those forms of writing should not be excluded from what we call "blogging." Perhaps he meant that all blogs represent organized human thought in the manner I roughly described above. Maybe so, but that's not a huge intellectual step to make (despite the fact that I think it's kinda neat to ponder), so it wouldn't seem to be worth the attention he gave it -- that wouldn't say anything that makes blogs unique.
In the end, this is probably all blog-navel examination, but I found the ideas interesting enough to want to play with them for a while.
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Omblogoskepsis? ;)