Jazz writing
June 9th, 2006 9:26:17 am pst by 
Sterling Camden
Blogging is the jazz of writing. You could call it “word jazz”, but that’s already taken. Chris Vallancourt has the right name for a blog: “Verbal Jazz“. How is blogging like jazz? Fill in the blanks below with either “blogging” or “jazz”:
_______ is spontaneous. It’s what hits you at the moment, not the result of years of carefully crafting details. It doesn’t follow a strict formula, though you might notice similarities and consistencies of style. All the rules are open to reinterpretation.
_______ is vulnerable. It’s your heart on a plate for everyone to see. Sure, they might poke it with their forks. The more of your true heart that’s in it, though, the more they will savor it.
_______ is open. Anyone can join in the jam, provided they don’t make a too evil noise. The best practitioners encourage and help beginners, because they know it’s in their best interest to grow and promote this community.
You might improve your _____ by studying its mechanics, but that really isn’t required in order to succeed. All you really need is to have a soul, to listen to it, and to let it out.
There is no final form of a work in ______. The best thing that can happen to your work is that someone else comes along and picks it up and creates something new from it. Hopefully they’ll acknowledge their source — there’s no reason not to.
Sometimes injecting some material from a more classical, structured source makes ______ more interesting, but ______ can never become completely bound by form and structure, or it dies.
Yesterday, Valleywag jestingly proclaimed the death of blogging — at Dave Winer’s hands, of course. When will blogging die? When people lose heart, bow to conformity, and can no longer be themselves. Blogging will die when jazz dies.
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[...] Gosh, I’ve only been blogging since January. Advice for fellow newbies: just lay it out there. Write what’s on your mind. No holding back (except truly sensitive information). No pretensions. You don’t have to plan and craft each entry, just let it pull itself together as you write. It’s jazz. Genuineness counts more than anything. Playfulness writes the material for you. Don’t take yourself seriously. Have fun, and your readers will have fun, too. [...]
Hey Sterlin, you’ve got a spammer in your midst.
interesting concept, blogging is jazz is blogging.
[...] Over at Chip’s Quips, Sterlin Camden writes on how blogging is like jazz, borrowing Chris Vallencourt’s term for what blogging is: Verbal Jazz. It really makes sense, if you think about it. All good jazz — and in turn all good blogs — share one thing in common, if anything. It’s free. It’s open. It’s honest. It’s unstructured. Above all, it’s beautiful. I would definitely consider Chip’s Quips and SOB: Scion of Bakronymics masterful jazz. I’m not too bad myself but I’m trying not to toot my own horn too much. [...]
[...] Chip writes an interesting piece that let’s you use either the term ‘blogging’ or ‘jazz’ in any sentence. The one difference with blogging is that the participatory rate is much higher, as the only skill required is the skill to write (and then sometimes not even that) vs years and years of instrument training and music theory. It’s as if a large percentage of the audience is now on stage with the musicians. [...]
Thanks, Joseph. That’s one that got by Akismet. Nuked.
Shel’s post: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/09/is_blogging_the.html
[...] Chip Camden compares blogging to jazz. I like this analogy because I like jazz and part of why I like it is because it’s so diverse….you never know what to expect. Also, I’m quick to skip a song if it’s not working for me but often I go back and listen again and decide it’s not bad…there’s something about it that resonates. Full Article:Naked Conversations: Is Blogging the Jazz of Writing? [...]
[...] Mi piace l’idea e suona persuasivo un blog che si chiama Jazz Writing. Come dice Dàimona : la “vulnerabilità” e l’assenza di una “final form” mi convincono abbastanza. [...]
I got da blues…
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screen of death when porting to Vista
So much for jazzing up my blog
Heh, good one, Stu. Thanks for digging up this old post of mine and reading it.
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oops! you’ve been meme’d.
[...] two years ago I said that blogging was the jazz of writing. Nowadays, a lot of what I read online more closely resembles the sounds you might hear if you let [...]