Blogs, ideas, and stories

I've been told, "blogs are not essays!" I like to think they are what the writer makes them to be. The writer has that right and the people have the right to choose what they want. For blogs to be an art though, the writer must know everything he has not said, everything that should be said, communicate it without saying anything, and
still say something.

Blogs then would be a form of poetry or cut-up prose rather than a kind of romanticism that projects egotism against the page.

Sometimes writing is simply a clump of sod torn out of the hairy Earth and sprinkled on the hand to see what shape it takes.

Do writers struggle to "make something out of an idea," as Thomas Mann suggested? If you define idea as anything that is possible and all that is impossible I would say yes. If a dream has shown us a possibility it is
an idea even if the intention on the part of the unconscious is something else.

There are ideas and then there are ideas. I have an idea for a greeting card. Is that equal to an idea on how the people of Iraq will have a democracy?

Well, equality has nothing to do with it. The ideas have their constituents and should pursue their ideas with passion.

Passion is a good term and can mean any number of things. It's certainly associated with a few acts. I suppose it is ardent belief that this is true, that this is right.

I recommended to a young woman that if she wanted
a promotion in a magazine she show passion for her magazine, for the magazine industry, and for the position she wants to move into. In other words, if this is what she wants her passion will take her there.

If it doesn't then she reflects at some point and comes to the realization that, after all, she is interested in something else. She was passionate about getting out of her old job perhaps and projected it into a new one.

One of the great human dramas occurs when passion confronts disillusionment.

On that note we will stop and reflect on the nature of ideas and stories that emerge from them.