Tuesday 23 February 2010

quality control


an acquaintance via the blogosphere recently wrote an opinion piece on how to make your blog entries sell. i'm not going to summarise it here, as most of the ideas are either intuitive, unethical or both, but there's something in particular that has caught my eye. according to him (and i wouldn't be surprised if this holds true in many person's lights), one way of making your blog popular is to feign literary value. in specific, he elaborates that you can make up poetry by 1. rambling 2. (mis)using big words 3. faking the artistic process. the latter includes being vague and nonsensical, and if / when attacked for doing so, one can counter with the claim that such haters have no literary appreciation.

this is all very well designed, but i lament the idea of being so callous with words. personally, i love writing poetry (as any reader will sighingly testify) and i put any personal work through at least a meager level of scrutiny before passing it as worthy of an audience (although this is not always the case, as i am a big believer in spontaneous works). in any case, if my acquaintance's observation / opinion that in general, people are misusing (maiming, butchering and adulterating) literature to this extent, which i can only describe as 'lacking good faith', then i am truly disgraced. annoyed. peeved. disappointed.

it makes me wonder, though, just how much quality i put into these 'poems' i may write, and am i just another (mis)user of a tried and tested 'cheap publicity stunt'. i guess, if anything, at least i still have my (unobtainable) muse.

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