Missing the Book for the Tweets
For the last two days, I’ve been trying to think about the benefits and drawbacks of various, let’s say sizes, of writing. Among the various sizes of canvas I use on a regular basis, a blog post falls right about in the middle: longer that a Tweet, longer than most memos or e-mails (“business” genres that I failed to mention previously), but shorter than the kind of writing that, by-and-large, wins and maintains one’s credentials in the academy: the article, the book chapter, the book.
I proposed the idea that not only does the scope of the writing assignment shape or distort the occasion for writing—but that, in the extreme, the writing genre of choice can actually blind us to some subjects, while allowing others to come into sharp focus. Which is to say that writing genres, rather than being absolutely continuous with one another, are separated by quantum leaps (like, if I’m remembering my college physics properly, the orbital states of electrons). A Facebook post isn’t just a long Tweet: it’s something different. Some threshold has been crossed, some assumptions radically altered. (Which is why some Facebook users get so annoyed at folks like me who have their Tweets set to update their Facebook status automatically. A reasonable kvetch: but, well, tough.)
I feel like I’m still struggling for what Flaubert might have called le metaphor juste: let me try just one more before shutting this puppy down. Let’s imagine you’re a photographer heading out for a day’s shooting; and you can take just one 35 mm SLR camera body, and one fixed-focal-length lens. No zooms, now: that’s cheating.
The camera body’s pretty simple: depending on one’s brand loyalties, you’d either reach for a Nikon or a Canon, probably—or, lacking all self-respect, maybe a Pentax. If you’re a pro you’ll own a few, and you’ll just take your “best,” and that’s not a tough call: the $8,000 Nikon D3X is better in every way than the $2700 D700, just as the D700 is better than the D7000. The principle is simple, even if the logic of Nikon’s model numbers is not.
But is any lens, in an abstract sense, better than any other lens? Let’s set aside questions of quality: one recent-model Nikkor lens stacks up pretty well against another, as far as that goes. No, when it comes to lenses, “better” requires an object: “better for what?” A 16mm is better for landscapes, panoramas; a 70mm is better for portraits. A 400mm is better for shooting a lion without hurting it, and without getting hurt yourself. Any reasonable person can agree that a D3X is better, in absolute terms, than a D7000; but without some specific goal in mind, a 400mm f/2.8 isn’t “better” than 16mm f/2.8. It’s just bigger.
So I guess what I’m really really looking for—switching back from photography to plain ol’ graphy—is the writer’s equivalent of the zoom lens. Each of the discrete writing genres I’ve touched on is non-continuous with its neighbors: if you’re sitting at your desk looking for a Tweet, you’re not going to hit on the idea for your next book. What’s a writer to do?
Well, one solution is to cut down the different kinds of assignments, occasions, genres for which/in which one writes. If, for instance, I were to lop the book off one end of the continuum (I’ve already got my highest promotion, and so don’t “need” ever to write another book) and the Tweet off the other (I’m not Lady Freakin’ Gaga, for heaven’s sake: who cares what I’m having for dinner?), my repertory becomes simpler, and I’d need to lug around fewer lenses. In my brain.
That, or something like it, is what I was thinking when I dropped the blog for three weeks: let’s simplify the media ecology of my swamp-like mind. But I feel now that wasn’t the solution: or not one I’m happy with, in any event. For the lenses don’t simply enable you to capture what you’ve “seen”: they help you to see what you wouldn’t otherwise have seen. They create, rather than simply reproducing, perception.
Before February 2010, I’d never Tweeted, never blogged. There were, as a result, entire wavelengths of things I’d not seen or thought about. My problem now is that I’m seeing perhaps too much?, and much of it rather tiny; I’m having a hard time keeping my eye on the big picture. But I have to believe that with greater experience, and greater discipline, that book-length focus will return: and that my books will be better, richer, because I Tweet and blog.
At least that’s the dream.
It’s nice to know that some things never change – once a camera snob, always a camera snob.
So glad you got something out of the post, Steve!
I am glad you’re writing here again. As you run through your genres/glasses/lens catalog, it reminds me of an exploratory writing prompt I have used — spend five minutes writing about your subject in five different modes/genre/lens/etc. I used to suggest “headline” as one of them. Is a Tweet like a headline only longer?
Yeah, Marilyn: long headline is about right, isn’t it? I’d never considered those “interruptions” in the “Aeolus” chapter of Ulysses to be Tweets; maybe we’ll take that up when we discuss “Aeolus” in class next week!