Monday, July 14, 2008

On Writing

Quite a few times, I have retold an event that occurred and received a comment of, "You should write a book, or at least keep a blog." I don't tell these people I keep a blog, but I do think of this blog and feel a little sad. My problem is that I tell stories much better than I write them. Having gone through high school and college participating in hundreds of public speaking events, I honed my skills of body language, nuance and vocal inflection. However, also focusing my academics on science made my written communication much more dry and to the point. I have this idea that if I write a blog, I'll get better at having more personable written communication. Now the problem is actually writing on a regular basis. Also, I edit parts of my life depending on to whom I'm speaking. My best friend knows 100%, Rabbi F, well, he knows less. I think it's appropriate that way. However, to be personable, sharing more is almost necessary. But, what if I share more than I would want, say, the Beis Din to know, and then it gets back to them? And, when I have these thoughts, I feel guilty, like maybe I'm trying to be dishonest, but I'm not. It's just that somewhere between 0% and 100% sharing is this level that, in order to understand the percent you know, you need to know more. Sometimes that more is much beyond the scope of our relationship.
Plus, the internet is quite open and for some reason, I imagine it being more difficult keeping my identity private here than it would be keeping it private in a book. Probably because I book is published (and written mostly) ex post facto and can be edited and re-edited for clues. This blog, well, goodness, I've already run out of little abbreviations to call people. In fact, my new plan is to go through and just assign random names to people to protect the innocent.

1 comment:

Avi Marcus said...

Perhaps videos or podcasts would be help you express yourself better!