Category — Writing/Literature/Publishing

As I re-do my blog, and very carefully re-create categories (they seemed haphazard and over-numerous in my old blog) I notice that categories multiply faster than actual blog entries (articles). How could this be? The answer is that each article can go in more than one category. In fact, I can often think of many categories that certain articles could potentially go into, but am not sure if there is a reason to actually create or use those categories.

For example, my article “The Future is in The CODE” clearly can be categorized under “science-biology”, and “computer science”, but also mentions a science-fiction author. Should I then also clasify it under “Science & Speculative Fiction”? That would probably be more appropriately a “tag”.

Another conceptual issue has to do with the hierarchy of categories. This is also related to the to a cultural issue: how we separate the “sciences” from the “humanities” and arts, even though, to my mind, they at minimum overlap, and many times are not truly separated in reality. There is much science and technology that goes into art. Depending on the person, this can be informal, learned-in-the-field technique, or well-researched and analyzed scientific approach to the materials and processes that one uses in their art-making. Likewise, there is much art in science.

This very article itself is an example of the issues involved: since it touches on both the humanities and the sciences, should I create a new blog category - “philosophy” - to cover that, as well as putting it under Writing/Literature/Publishing and “blogging”?

I’ll have to ponder this and perhaps do a little research…

Now, as far as Tags go, my impression is that tags are more particularized, whereas categories are more general and hierarchical. Think of a tag cloud: you can see how many posts have to do with a particular topic, and if you see some juicy fruit, you pick it - it’s a way of connecting that primate visual ability with that abstract linguistic human left-brain thing …

Here is the scenario:

A character who finally, after years of struggling with depression and anxiety, finds a drug that helps him be happy. He concurrently also rediscovers his abilities as a writer. Working in that high-tech field made him very ill – physically and mentally – from the stress.

He then tried his hand at photography, and had some success. Then he gets into painting from his photos. He was good at it, creating works of great technical proficiency, impressive in their clarity and mastery, but lacking in warmth and feeling. To him, the reward was in the accomplishment, in solving a problem, getting good at it, proving he could do it. The learning. Not in the doing. The doing was pure hard work

He would spend weeks or months slaving away on a painting, pushing himself to the edge of his abilities. But then, what did he have? A mere image. Something to look at for seconds, minutes perhaps. Something that people would ooh and aah at, and compliment him on. But there was no real dialogue, no meat for his mind. On top of that it brought in none of the extra money he used to pay his bills, pay off his loans and buy toys. All that intense work for a few minutes of pleasure didn’t seem worth it to him.

Then writing out of desperation, as an outlet or therapy for his frustrations and all the thoughts and questions and ideas plaguing his mind.

However the drug also takes away his ability to write because it knocks out short term memory and word retrieval, so all he can write is very poor quality material, like from an adolescent or a drunk. How does he resolve this, what ways does he try?

Without the drug, he wrote brilliant essays skewering current political, social and scientific events, but he was an intolerable, irascible crank socially, a critical ball of irritability constantly in a struggle with himself to not say what he was thinking about what his wife, or anyone else was doing, or the state of society. On the drug, he became a warm, friendly, funny, loving person. But all he could write were silly verbal gymnastics, like “perhaps the perfunctorily piddilating pooch prefers perambulating in the presidio”. Which were enjoyed by his wife, who liked his silliness, but elicited nothing but groans from his editors and literary friends.

It was no contest for his spouse: the choice between the calm, friendly, relaxed, tolerant, affectionate man, and the prickly grump was a no-brainer. They had enough money to live on from her family (her father made sure she was taken care of before he died), and the house was paid off. But to him it was a serious and terrible dilemma, of Greek proportions.

Things had only gotten worse lately - he had tried alternating weeks, on and off the medication. When he was off it, he became increasingly irritable. He’d recently gotten irate about having to pay for a “public museum” , asking the museum clerk “Is this public or is this private!? Do you sell the works here?” Fortunately, he quickly brought himself under control and calmed his nerves - a trick years of meditation had taught him.

A modern pharmaceutical Scylla and Charybdis.

On the one hand was his wife: the cute, sexy, fun, warm (and rich) infinitely supportive female with and about whom he said he felt like he’d “won the lottery”. The woman that loved him absolutely.

Charybdis - the whirlpool - was the drug. It swallowed his talent whole. His writing is what gave his life as a whole a meaning. It was the forge where he could take anything in life, any experience, any confusing or distressing thoughts, and make sense of them, or at least create art from chaos. It’s what gave him public recognition, pride, a love for work, a sense of accomplishment, a way of connecting with people in the world. It was a way for the inner and outer to mesh: essential for an inward thinking type personality like him.

Scylla was his life and work without the drug: alluring, and deadly to his marriage.

Why have a joined the Brave New World of Blogging? I avoided it for many years because I was concerned it would be too time-consuming. For starters, I already write in a journal every morning as part of my daily routine, and often write in it during the day (and night). So, I thought also writing in a blog would just add to the already long (non-money-making) list of things I do everyday, and I would be repeating content - writing double as it were - and I already felt a little guilty about all the time I get “distracted” by my curiosity, passions, interests and creative activities.

However, the reality is … more complex than that. (Reality often is). What happens is, I get interested in some topic, and spend time researching, thinking, surfing the web, saving notes and links, AND THEN, email friends about what I’ve discovered, uncovered, or created (such as photos or writings). This process of emailing different friends is repetitive: I don’t just cc: (”carbon copy”) the email, because different friends are different, with different interests, and I don’t want them to feel they were just part of a mass emailing anyway. That emailing process is repetitive of the journal writing anyway, and repetitive with the various emails I send to different audiences.

Not only that, but later I often want to find the reference to a link I sent to some friend, and have to sort or sift or search through old emails or journals to find it. Blogging software uses a database to save everything, and has search capabilities. Links are part of blog posts. As are photos. So it seems a natural solution.

I can also reach a much wider audience - both those people I already know, and anyone that finds their way here, or who I give the link to.

So … I investigated various Content Management Systems (CMS) besides WordPress (one of the two blogging packages my ISP offers to install for free), with names like Drupal, Joomla, and XOOPS. Sounds like the name of juicebars or candy, eh? I decided to stop messing around and try WordPress. I’ve tended to get bogged down in research in the past when I was looking into blogging and wanting to use a software package on my server instead of one of the services out there such as Blogger.

In the process of research I did get sidetracked this time – though in a good way – learning about such things as “cruft”, “Permalink” and the “MetaWeblog” API. I also saw terms that I’ve learned recently like “pingback” and “trackback” when I was researching “splogging”.
Why was I researching splogging? Well, that’s a long story.