Curiosity and the blogger
A while back I was explaining to someone what it is that I do as a blogger, and I said, “I write a couple of term papers a day.”
Strange, isn’t it, considering that I hated writing term papers in school and would do almost anything to procrastinate while writing them? And yet these term papers that I’ve been writing daily for close to 15 years (yikes!) are self-inflicted.
What drives me? Probably a lot of things (some of which I’m sure I’ve written about before, but I’m too lazy at the moment to find the old posts and link to them). One is that I’ve always had a lot of opinions and very few people to listen. Another is that over the years I’ve built up a readership and don’t want to disappoint. Still another is the force of habit; it’s become a bit like brushing my teeth, although I hope more interesting.
But perhaps most of all there’s curiosity. I have a stable of what’s known as evergreens, posts I’ve never published but which I save for a rainy or an especially busy or a vacation day. And sometimes I trot one out and publish it. But most of the time I make it hard for myself and I write something fresh.
Like this post I’m writing right now. It was sparked by my finishing my most recent post, a rather lengthy slog through the history of British referendums. That in turn was generated by my feeling that I don’t understand British politics and probably never will understand British politics, but I wanted to know what’s up with this referendum thing? In other words, why did the British decide to use a UK-wide referendum to decide on something such as whether to remain in or leave the EU, when in this country we never have made national decisions based on that more supposedly “democratic” process?
Thus, this post. Much of the time I am driven by the need to better understand something I really don’t understand. I suppose that’s very different from holding myself out as an authority, as many pundits do. Of course, I am a bit of an authority on certain things, ballet among them. And perhaps poetry, to a certain extent. But usually what drives me is the learning process. If I’m to write a couple of term papers a day, the very least I can do is to assign myself topics that interest me.
And hope that somehow they’ll interest you, too.
[NOTE: On the number of unpublished posts I have in draft form, please see this.]
Neo, is it possible that you like blogging because unlike term papers you have more freedom to choose the subject.
The fact that you post because blog as a learning process is what I like about this site. A lot of pundits come across (to me at least) as extremely smug. Even those I agree with.
Thank you neo for producing such a wide variety of ‘term papers’ that make this blog a daily, except Sundays, must read.
“Much of the time I am driven by the need to better understand something I really don’t understand.”
Sorry, but that’s the sort of thing I don’t really understand. To understand nothing about something is to understand much more about that something than if you actually knew something about it.
We appreciate the effort.
Neo: “That in turn was generated by my feeling that I don’t understand British politics and probably never will understand British politics, ….”
I don’t understand British politics either. The news about BOJO and the Brexit maneuverings have left me glassy eyed. Unlike you, I have no intention of searching for answers because I have better things to do with my time. (Like watch my grass grow or watch the maples turn red. 🙂 ) I’m glad you are willing to do that work and hope that you can inform us all about the mysteries of British politics.
Also, your blog is visited by some interesting and well informed people, so maybe you (and I) will get some help in this matter.
One thing I do know about the British s that they like a good scrap. There are only twenty-two countries that have never been invaded by the Brits. Stands to reason they might like a good brawl among themselves, doesn’t it?
Still enjoying those two term papers a day and thanking you for producing them, as well as attracting an informed and well-spoken bunch of commenters.
I hated term papers too. In my first bash at college I intentionally picked courses which didn’t require papers. It wasn’t until I started participating on bulletin boards and blogs that I became comfortable with writing.
It made a big difference I was writing what I wanted to write for palpable people who might like what I wrote. Otherwise the arctic whiteness of blank paper or screen can be too intimidating.
“One is that I’ve always had a lot of opinions and very few people to listen. ”
I confess to having this as a large motivation for commenting!
As with Neo, the drive to understand something, or at least know more about it, plays a part for me as well. While doing that research, I also discover (far too often, sigh) that what I thought I knew about something isn’t quite correct.
As for term papers themselves: I eventually recognized that what I loved was the research and analysis. Once I had things sorted enough for my own satisfaction, actually writing it out for the professors was an excruciating chore.
Sorry, but that’s the sort of thing I don’t really understand.
Gerard vanderleun: I guess you’re offering a left-handed compliment, but neo is making a standard point we’ve heard before in the writer biz. And you’re a writer.
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
–Flannery O’Connor
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I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
–Joan Didion
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I write to find out what I think.
–Stephen King
It’s a long, somewhat convoluted story. I have only commented on 3 websites (neoneocon being one) (and one of the others was only 1, single comment) (I don’t even do Bacefook or twitter or any other social media), but around 2005 (2007?) the proprietor of the third web log asked me to help him out of a jam. He contacted me via email. To this day I have no idea why he chose me out of the hundreds of regular commenters he had. He and I have hardly communicated since. He was moving onto a new site which almost instantly became Ginormous and has even resulted in television appearances for him.
I wanted to help, and so, I suddenly found myself the proprietor of a weblog with a HUGE readership. When he asked me to take the reins I told him I didn’t think I had anything to write about. His advice: write about what interests you. To my surprise, like you Neo, I found it was fairly easy to churn out multiple, lengthy posts a day. I wrote about what I wanted to know more about, and used the brilliant comments from my brilliant commenters (similar to the folks here) to hone my thoughts, which would lead to more posts. I had thousands of daily readers, tens of thousands of unique hits a month. (The site that had been haned to me came with a huge, built in readership.) As had been done with me, I decided to share the wealth and reached out to a handful of regular commenters who appeared to have a flare for writing and interesting insights. I called it “feeding the beast.” I knew if content dropped off I’d lose readership, so adding 5 other post’ers would ensure there were 10 – 20 new posts a day, about 1 every 90 minutes, or so, to keep folks returning.
I’m a fairly competitive sort. I had no interest in running a successful website, but once one was handed to me I was determined to keep it successful. It was a big, personal surprise that so many words were in me. I had no idea I wanted to write, until I had an audience. Then, almost as surprisingly, I realized one day that I had pretty much worked through most of the things I was interested in. I understood that I had been using the blog as a sort-of stream of consciousness way to find answers to some philosophical and political topics I hadn’t fully sorted out. That’s why it was so easy to write so many words, so frequently. And, once I had fully fleshed out the things that were eating at me, I was done. I didn’t care about the “numbers,” I only cared about the information. And I was blessed to have some really bright people take time to comment and guide me to truth. I emailed the 5 other folks I had brought in, gifted the blog to them, and haven’t written a post since.
Maybe you’re similar Neo, but your bigger brain gives you a greater breadth of interests, so you are still going strong?! I’m glad you are. And I learn a lot from your commenters, also.
Please keep on keepin’ on with the writing. I learn so much myself from your researches!
Thanks for the effort of writing these ‘term papers ‘ Neo. Your writing gives me so much to think about. I find I agree agree with your well thought out ideas.
But I wish the edit function worked better:-)
Neo, don’t be too modest – you have an excellent analytic mind, with a lot of empathy and understanding for those liberal Democrats whose huge good intentions make them believe in … the various fantasies they believe in. Your respectful disagreement with them is very admirable. I wish more of them would stop by and read your stuff (with or w/o admiration).
Your comments (on Michael Totten’s old blog at the time; his World Affairs link no longer works) were often as insightful as his. I’ve gone thru your blogroll before, and none are as consistently interesting as you. (Since I love to dance, your dancing is ok; tho I don’t prefer ballet, and don’t like watching so much.)
When you choose a term paper topic, it’s usually better than anything else out there, or at least a very interesting addendum, like with VDH and Andrew McCarthy. I actually think your writing should ALSO be in some more conservative media group site like PJ Media / Townhall / Breitbart? / OAN? but I can imagine even asking them to pay you is hard for you to do.
But I like being able to read your commenters, too – unlike at Ann Althouse, for instance.
Finally, almost nothing you’ve been interested in has not been at least somewhat interesting to me. And of course since I agree you most of the time, your “better than mine” arguments about your point of view on an issue are very very welcome.
The mark of an intellectual in the proper sense. The historian Paul Johnson offered the same explanation as to why he writes. Please keep writing you term papers.
Tom Grey:
Thanks very much!
However, I did write for PJ (and they paid me, although of course not a ton) for 9 years. I wrote about 90 articles there, I think, or something like that. However, they re-organized a few years ago and stopped wanting my pieces. It also has become difficult to access my old articles there. Here’s one that came up just now in a search, but although they used to have them all indexed under my name—first under “neo-neocon” and then later ones under “Jean Kaufman”—that index doesn’t seem to be operating any more.
;
What I really should do is find them all and put up something with links to them all. That’s a lot of work, though, and not my top priority right now.
I also wrote for the online version of the Weekly Standard, although not nearly as often. Just now, trying to access them, I discovered they are gone (although I saved them a while back and they’re somewhere on my hard drive). However, curiously enough, they are now on a page at the Washington Examiner. How odd! They were originally written for the Weekly Standard. I can’t figure that one out, but I’m glad they exist somewhere.
Here’s the link to the articles at the Washington Examiner.
“I discovered they are gone (although I saved them a while back and they’re somewhere on my hard drive). ” – Neo
On the few occasions I have thought about running my own blog, I decided that all of my posts would be written in a document & saved before being posted.
To all you folks that DO blog: Is that a workable system, or is there a down-side I probably haven’t thought of?
AesopFan:
Blogs get very big very fast. I believe if you did that, the document would be unwieldy.
The articles of mine that appeared at PJ and WS were actually Word documents to begin with, although they’re on an old computer. I still have them somewhere.
Neo, I fear you are right, although I would probably use more than one document and folder.
Sigh.
Thanks for making available a substitute for us lazy folks.
And…everything is somewhere!
neo,
A few years back I was contacted by one of the people I “deeded” my blog to; there had been some sort of incident during a WordPress upgrade and all the history had vanished. Since I’m somewhat tech savvy he asked if I could take a look and see if anything could be salvaged. I was very busy at the time, and told him I’d try in a few weeks. It’s quite a thing. I probably had 2,000 – 4,000 posts on the site, many of them thousands of words long. After a few days thought I decided I didn’t want to resurrect them. I went to the Way back machine and downloaded 2, one I will share with my daughter some day, and a second about running.
It’s likely that will be my only foray into writing for an audience and looking back on it I was surprised to learn that the content itself wasn’t important to me. I benefitted from the process of expounding daily on current events, and my opinions had matured and that’s really what mattered.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Wow, that sounds like a nightmare to me. I’m glad it didn’t upset you too much. It would upset me greatly. I like the process, but I’m also interested in the product.
But usually what drives me is the learning process.
There are certain topics you don’t want to learn about nor do you want anyone else to learn about, Neo. An interesting personal blind area of yours.
Ymarsakar:
You haven’t a clue what I’ve learned about those topics, so stop making assumptions about it. I’ve actually read a fair amount about several of the things you have been trying to write about in many of your comments on this blog, and I have come to my own conclusions about them.
What’s more, I have no problem with anyone learning any of it, if that’s their interest. But—as I’ve written many times here—I am not turning my blog into a discussion group for those things, and comment after comment from you or anyone else about them isn’t something I want to have on the blog. But you don’t see me trying to stop anyone from going to any site that deals with those things and learning about them.
There are plenty of other topics I don’t write about, and plenty of things I’m not about to turn my blog into a forum for. You and everyone else are free to discuss them as much as you want elsewhere. I would not advocate stopping you from doing so.
We all have different interests. This blog is a forum for what I’m interested in. I write about what I’m interested in, and I certainly never claimed to be equally interested in everything. I am not. Nor do I find everything equally valid. I do not.
Neo, I’m sorry – I just can’t pass up such a good introduction to this graphic from Power Lines’ POTW:
Crazy how nature does that…
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-08-30-at-8.16.45-PM.png?w=932&ssl=1