Here is my blog post responding to Dr. Burton's posts about the three phases of academic blogging and spiraling. I find the concept of social proof interesting. It makes sense that in order to be admitted into a more serious blogging sphere about a particular topic, you have to test the waters and put yourself out there to see if your ideas really hold water (yeah, I'll continue with the Moby Dick metaphors throughout this post). It seems like spiraling combined with social proof creates the perfect storm of continued progress in academic blogging. Reviewing his or her work and submitting content for peer review is what any good researcher does. But when does spiraling end? Is it infinite? How do you know when you're really done with something you write or post?
Some writers argue that you're never done. There can always be improvement. I wonder if using blogging as a platform to publish your ideas can suck you up in a spiraling whirlpool that drags you down into oblivion because you chased the white whale of perfection. Digital culture and online forums change the way we write. If you can get constant, somewhat instantaneous feedback from people all over the world about your ideas, you could potentially be revising your work forever. I suppose that's where your own analysis and your own spiraling around comes in. Although others can spiral around your work like sharks waiting to feed or like dolphins that splash you with waves of praise, you ultimately decide your writing's fate and when it ends.
I know when I'm writing something important, I like to take breaks and spiral back around to review it again to get a fresh perspective on it. I think this is very helpful. I also appreciate the feedback of others. Writing works well as a collaborative process. Although I am a bit intimidated by the idea of collecting social proof, I think it will be a great help in eventually moving me to phase three of my academic blogging as Dr. Burton says. I just hope to find balance between the feedback of others and my own spiraling, so I can produce great work. It's going to be hard to be so vulnerable in posting work in differing stages of completeness, but writing is a learning process. We are all learning to have confidence in ourselves while being open to criticism. Do any of you have fears about balancing spiraling and social proof? When do you know when you are satisfied or finished with a piece of writing? Is perfection in writing possible? Should it even be pursued?
I don't think it's so much finding perfecting in writing as it is continuing (or starting) a conversation. It's like what English professors tell you when they say to write a paper that enters the scholarly conversation on a piece. Just like entering a scholarly conversation is often more productive for research than trying to start a completely new one, it's important to find social proof for our arguments (evidence that the conversation is at least important to people).
ReplyDeleteTo answer some of the questions you asked at the end of your blog, I think that for me personally I never feel like my writing is finished nor do I ever feel one hundred percent satisfied with my writing. Though I don't think that perfection is possible in writing,sometimes for me as a writer I feel like there will always be that sense that there is something in my writing that I need to fix, that I never am able to experience any real closure in my writing. So, though perfect does not exist in writing, I feel that writers despite that fact are constantly searching and seeking out for it.
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