too many words by laura lemay

but enough about you, here's a bunch of stuff about me

My friend Suzanne Stefanec is writing a book about blogging called Dispatches From Blogistan. As part of writing that book she’s been interviewing all kinds of important internet luminaries with good intelligent things to say about blogging and the future of the web. So far she’s got Cory Doctorow and Jamais Cascio and Bruce Sterling and Craig Newmark and Denise Caruso…and, um, me. (I think I’m the comedy relief.)

The interview with me is up on Suzanne’s site now. I got kind of carried away writing it so before you click over you might want to go fix yourself a sandwich and a big cup of coffee first.

Actually if I can put down the sarcasm stick for just a second: this interview is some of the more personal writing I’ve ever done. It took a lot of time and thought for me just to answer the first question — I have told the story about how I got into computer books a lot of times, but I’ve never really explained why I stopped. That’s always been a hard story to tell. I told it here.

One of my goals for this blog for the future — and for my writing in general — is to try to be a more honest and open writer. Its something I’ve been particularly bad about here. I almost never post anything really personal, hiding behind humor and arguing to myself that someone who might hire me might read this blog and thus I shouldn’t be “unprofessional” (and yet just this morning I posted pictures of knitted internal organs… right.) I think I can’t be personal because I might embarass myself, or I might piss of someone close to me, or someone random might get offended and send me angry email. (I’m not so good with the angry email.)

And yet as I pointed out in the interview above my favourite blogs are the ones that tell good stories, that are well-written and interesting. The other common thread of many of them is that they are deeply personal. It gives them a strong emotional connection that I really admire.

It’s something I want to work on.