vlog 4.0 [a blog about vogs]

I’ve started a writing project that has come out of the research leave I had last year. Basically I’m writing draft essays come semi-structured thoughts, which will end up online. I’m using Tinderbox because while my blog has some good stuff in it, I can’t find it easily, and I also want a writing project that grows and becomes more densely interconnected than a blog tends to be. So the writing has been going well, have a prototype site designed but not public yet (currently pretty much the same as I’ve used for the integrated media course notes this year) but I have a dilemma.

The first major part has become a 5000 word node, which means I can also spend a bit more polishing time once I do the publishing in this particular project to turn it into something for publication. But 5000 words! The original idea of writing like this was for something more hypertextual. Shorter nodes that broke off and linked to other bits when new ideas arose. Instead this is pretty much flat land essay. Now, the actual dilemma. I could break this up into more appropriate nodes, rewrite each of these so they are more self contained and not like an essay. The advantages of this are that I know I can write more quickly, more broadly, but also with more detail like this. For me everything is intertwingled (to quote the ever quotable Ted Nelson) and so one reason this node has grown to 5000 words is because this idea leads to this one which leads to this one which then needs more background and explanation.

The disadvantages, for me, of writing more hypertextually though are that if this 5000 word essay became five 1000 word nodes then to turn that into a publishable outcome, which nearly always still means a traditional essay, means taking these parts and reworking them quite a bit to make them work as an essay. It is not, technically, that difficult to do, though can be time consuming. It often involves a lot of editing because to write hypertext hypertextually often means writing things in relatively self contained ways. But the biggest problem is that I find finishing things, getting something from 85% finished to 100%, the hardest, and so that last step – taking it out of Tinderbox and into Word or whatever to roll it into an essay. If it is too distant from that final form then I’m concerned it just won’t happen. Now, that doesn’t matter, the work is published online, out there, available. More available then it will ever be in a bloody journal quite frankly. But I have to tick boxes as part of my position description as an academic, and simply creating and distributing doesn’t tick any.

What to do? Suck it and see is the only option isn’t it? No good trying to solve it here. Let’s try to move to a more hypertextual writing model, less essay nodes, and see what comes of that. Long nodes aren’t of themselves wrong – look at Wikipedia in many ways I think the idea of having most collected on the one page makes a lot of good sense – but if it gets in the way of my thinking and writing practice then that is a problem.