Again with the confusion over what story to cover, how much or how little to write, and how to keep this quandary from making me jump from one topic to another and have nothing to show for it.
The topics morph so quickly when I watch the news. The Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Health Care Act was huge, and I should have jumped in to write about the plan itself and the questions answered by the court. But I get fascinated by the politics, so I watched in surprise as the headlines turned to the way some conservatives were so dismayed by Chief Justice Roberts' opinion that they turned on him, some even questioning his mental faculties.
So do I want to write reasoned, in depth pieces about national health policy and the law, or do I want to analyze the fallout?
George Zimmerman's audio and video-taped phone calls and interviews are released, and I made my way through long stretches of each one, knowing I could share some observations that weren't being made by anyone who had only watched little snippets being shown on the news. But then his bond hearing came up and I watched with intensity as his attorney tried an unusual procedure (that didn't work) to try to get Zimmerman's plea to the judge for bond on the record without having to face cross-examination.
So do I give folks who can't necessarily watch court TV during the day the play-by-play, with all the dramatic details, or do keep slogging through the video tapes, and work out what I think the important elements are?
And I'm still tracking online and on-TV dialogues about the tone of our nation's discourse, and keeping track of where things stand with Voter ID laws. This kind of a thought-buffet just can't be good for anyone.
On one hand it seems obvious to me that the more important work I have to do is the bigger pieces, the ones that take the leg work and the analysis, and the extra time in composition. But I have gotten enough feedback to know there are people who like getting the sort of up-to-the-minute blasts I do on facebook and sometimes on here.
Do I want to turn off the TV and go write my book? Do I want to chuck the book and even the longer articles, and join the fray of partisan daily bloggers?
And there is also the question of tone - obviously I can be hot-tempered and polemic, but I am also drawn to more careful evaluation and a balanced tone.
I know, maybe I could just keep writing nothing but journal entries about what I should write.
SIGH.
This is all on a tiny scale right now - a couple of hundred hits a day on this site, a couple dozen people who regularly read and respond to my posts on facebook. But I need to figure it out, because I am getting those couple of hundred hits with virtually no promotion of the site, so I feel sure if I start promoting and tweeting and cross-posting with other bloggers and so forth, I will have enough of an audience to feel like I'm headed down the right road. So I need to figure out my pace.
The topics morph so quickly when I watch the news. The Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Health Care Act was huge, and I should have jumped in to write about the plan itself and the questions answered by the court. But I get fascinated by the politics, so I watched in surprise as the headlines turned to the way some conservatives were so dismayed by Chief Justice Roberts' opinion that they turned on him, some even questioning his mental faculties.
So do I want to write reasoned, in depth pieces about national health policy and the law, or do I want to analyze the fallout?
George Zimmerman's audio and video-taped phone calls and interviews are released, and I made my way through long stretches of each one, knowing I could share some observations that weren't being made by anyone who had only watched little snippets being shown on the news. But then his bond hearing came up and I watched with intensity as his attorney tried an unusual procedure (that didn't work) to try to get Zimmerman's plea to the judge for bond on the record without having to face cross-examination.
So do I give folks who can't necessarily watch court TV during the day the play-by-play, with all the dramatic details, or do keep slogging through the video tapes, and work out what I think the important elements are?
And I'm still tracking online and on-TV dialogues about the tone of our nation's discourse, and keeping track of where things stand with Voter ID laws. This kind of a thought-buffet just can't be good for anyone.
On one hand it seems obvious to me that the more important work I have to do is the bigger pieces, the ones that take the leg work and the analysis, and the extra time in composition. But I have gotten enough feedback to know there are people who like getting the sort of up-to-the-minute blasts I do on facebook and sometimes on here.
Do I want to turn off the TV and go write my book? Do I want to chuck the book and even the longer articles, and join the fray of partisan daily bloggers?
And there is also the question of tone - obviously I can be hot-tempered and polemic, but I am also drawn to more careful evaluation and a balanced tone.
I know, maybe I could just keep writing nothing but journal entries about what I should write.
SIGH.
This is all on a tiny scale right now - a couple of hundred hits a day on this site, a couple dozen people who regularly read and respond to my posts on facebook. But I need to figure it out, because I am getting those couple of hundred hits with virtually no promotion of the site, so I feel sure if I start promoting and tweeting and cross-posting with other bloggers and so forth, I will have enough of an audience to feel like I'm headed down the right road. So I need to figure out my pace.