"A Brief Break For Blogatorial Business"

Following a post called “State Of The Blog Interlude”, published January 24^th but written a week or so earlier, I received four comments.  Which, for me, is a ton.     

I thought something serious had happened to me.

Among that avalanche of comments was one from regular visitor JED, which read, in part,

“Your readers do ask questions from time to time but I think you’re writing your posts well ahead of when they are published so answering a question that is days or weeks old doesn’t make sense.”

My reaction is,

“Hm.” 

“Hm.”

And “Hm”, again.

“Answering questions that are days or weeks old doesn’t make sense.”

Why not? 

I doubt if responding sooner would have altered the answer.  I’m just not that kind of a guy.  And if the question’s worth answering, I say the answer’s worth waiting for.  Come on, now!  It’s me!

Still, if JED – whose comments invariably have merit – says something, I listen.  Even if I don’t entirely understand. 

As I recall, many commenter questions have evolved into entire posts.  Not necessarily right away, but that’s either because I did not immediately notice the question, or it took time to fashion a suitable answer, or, as JED sensibly suggests, I had completed posts already scheduled to be published, or, jumping back, I was not sure why the now fully considered answer couldn’t wait.    

(Can you do “either-or” with four alternatives?  Can you say “alternatives” when there are more than two?  I seem to recall you can’t.  Oh, well.  This is casual conversation, so I’m doing it.)

Let me clarify the first explanation, not as a defense – well, maybe a little bit as a defense – but as more of a demystifying “Now you know.” 

Until recently, all reader comments were automatically transmitted to my e-mail, so   when I checked my e-mail, I could immediately see the comments.  (Accompanied by the word I misread as “Noreplay”, which a correcting family member later explained to me meant “No Reply.”)

Now that “Reader Comments” only appear at the end of the posts, I have to click on “View Blog”, in order to access them.  And I frequently forget.  (Like I look at my compartmentalized “Pill Case” on Thursday and see I forgot to take them on Wednesday.)

Now that I think of it, I never hosted a specific “Question Day”, offering a list of questions and my abbreviated answers in a single post.  Why not?  Because I don’t get enough questions.  And when I get one I can sink my teeth into, I make it an entire post.

(Ken Levine traditional does “Friday Questions” on his wonderful blog (bykenlevine.com).  I recently thought of parodying that tradition, borrowing actual questions from Ken’s blog, and answering them, in turn, “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember.” Wisely, I believe, I decided against it.)

Let me hereby assert that every question deserves an answer.  The thing is, sometimes, I don’t have one.  Or I do, but it’s not interesting.  Plus, offering a brief answer to an individual question would not fill a entire post.  It would only be “sample-sized.”

Now… as to “writing ahead”.   Generating the distancing “disconnect” caused by “writing ahead” but, as for the subsequent comments, “reading behind.”)

Okay.  Here’s a current example.

Right now as you are reading this, I am in New York, accompanying Dr. M on a psychoanalytic conference.  (Not as wildly “raucous” as you might imagine.)  I have taken along a “laptop” but do not know if it will see action.  As a result, I have to preemptively “write ahead.”  Otherwise, there’ll be a big “Empty” on my blog while I’m away.

That’s primarily why I “write ahead”, and my answers consequently become separated from your questions.  I can “move things around”, answering the questions immediately by bumping the already scheduled post to a subsequent date.  But, trust me, that does not always work out.  I end up losing the rescheduled post, or there are two posts, published on the same day.

I can, hopefully, train myself to check “View Blog” every day for incoming comments (since they are no longer transmitted to “Noreplay.”)  And I can be more open to the questions that come in.

Being “ahead” in my writing?  I don’t know what to do about that.  Not only does it provide fill-in material for “real life” interruptions, it is also a comfort.  There is still the pressure of “What will I write today?”  But if I can’t think of anything, I am bailed out by the accumulated “backlog.”  (Note:  The foregoing crisis has not once happened in over eleven years of blog writing.  But tomorrow?  Who knows?)

Writing closer to “real time” seems like the answer.  But there are meaningful consequences if I do.  Help me out, here.  Sometimes, I am simply obtuse about these things.  Unless that’s a geometrical figure, and then I’m something else.