Writing with personality & passion

As my second round of writing-for-the-internet has gone underway, I’m struggling to carve out a niche–especially on technotheory. I’ve always been a writer and I’ve always had topics, but strangely there seems to be a disconnect. Alluding to the previous post, I think that disconnect is quality. That is, even with all the crap, there’s a lot of great writing online, and it’s tough to compete with.

For the moment, the writer I’m most enamored with is Kathy Sierra. She writes reflectively about technology, science, and business….but rather than covering current events, her Creating Passionate Users blog looks at seemingly innocuous topics in very different perspectives. But what truly separates her from the masses (at least for me) is that she expresses herself with personality, both in terms of her writing and the quirky diagrams she includes with most of her entries. While most people tone down their writing to make it more “professional,” her conversational style is inviting without losing its cogency. Here’s an example from a recent post titled, “When only the glib win, we all lose…“:

Let’s face it–the clever, witty, glib talkers can make the non-clever, non-witty, and non-glib sound like slow dolts. Slow-to-articulate is mistaken for slow-in-the-head. And as the world speeds up and decisions have to be made right frickin’ NOW, it just gets worse.

So there’s the heart of the problem–if you’re not able to explain your thoughts, ideas, and concerns quickly and articulately, you are often at a disadvantage. I’ve been there. I am there. I’m capable of thinking (some would debate that), willing to do the research, and reasonably articulate. But I need time! I have never been one of those think-on-your-feet types. With the exception of those few things in which I have a lot of expertise and experience, I pretty much suck at having to explain, defend, or promote something in real-time.

I have a similar feeling about Kate’s blog, “a cat and twenty.” Maybe it’s because I’ve known her for a long time…but I think she has the rare gift of making even the most banal trivialities into amusing and worthwhile topics. Even better, she does have a lot of important things to discuss. I’ve really enjoyed watching how in the last 6 months as her blog has developed a community. Some of it is definitely based on a give and take, but much of it is due to her writing like this:

i’m guessing that the seat of my reluctance to completely buck the trend of [marital] engagement is social conditioning. i know, it’s not as sexy as repressed memories or the revelation that i’m the second coming of elizabeth taylor or anything, but i think it’s true. no matter how rationally we can parse something, no matter how resolutely we can claim to be beyond the need for something so obviously socially constructed (and thus socially controlling), the undertow of what is expected can pull us under. that’s the way social conditioning works, for gods sake - if it weren’t so persuasive, would everybody be doing it? not to sound like i’m channelling a fundie here, but marriage is a cornerstone of how our society functions - the nuclear family, and its gender roles, are intrinsic to maintaining the status quo. and it’s any society’s ultimate aim to maintain the status quo and keep things humming along smoothly.

Thanks, Kate, for so eloquently and easily standing your ground.

So why am I writing all this? Well if there’s one thing that defines my personality it’s a tendency to introspect and find the answer. Right now the question is where my place is with writing online. Thinking about the writers I enjoy, the sites that have gained attention, and the types of bloggers out there, and whether or not I’m up to the quality of writing I see above, helps me to better understand where I can carve my niche. You’re probably thinking that one doesn’t need to overthink this, but that argument would never work on me…