It always surprises me to see how my blogging style has changed (for the better) over the years. Today I reread my Pulp Fiction post in the process of writing about movie memories, and it really drove that point home.
Back when I first started blogging, I would mix topics and go off on tangents that were mainly uninteresting and didn’t even relate to the rest of the post. As essays, these posts clearly fail. I’ve noticed that nowadays, when I’m writing something and a new idea occurs to me, I think about whether or not it will fit in the current post before I add it. Two examples: my Kyou Kara Maou post from last night (which, admittedly, isn’t very well-written) has a tangent that I didn’t think detracted too much. The subject wasn’t meaty enough to warrant its own post, but I wanted to mention it. And today, while writing about movies, I wondered if I should include my thoughts about my personality, how I’m afraid I’m too naive in many respects, how I subscribe to the “Shibuya Yuuri school of diplomacy”, how these thoughts relate to my reaction to the Moussaoui verdict, and what kind of president I think I would be. Obviously these things stray wildly from the point at hand…so I chose to reserve them for later.
I see my posts now as individual capsules. If I link to one of them, I’d like for people to know immediately why there was a link, and not have to stumble through random remarks about what I’ve eaten that day and references (without links!) to other posts. Reading that Pulp Fiction post really made me cringe, and I’m terribly tempted to go back and edit it.
But I’m the type who likes to leave things as they originally existed, “for the record”, so if I ever do edit that post, I’ll leave the original up too.