All Atwitter

I make my living writing. It's something I love and something that constantly presents challenges. One of the beliefs I've long held about writing -- even before I made it a profession -- is that the best writing is collaborative. An extra set of eyes will make any piece of writing significantly stronger than it would otherwise be without those eyes. I can't count how many times CK has given me suggestions, guidance, or constructive criticism on my own work that has made it immensely better than it would have been without her feedback. Whatever opinion people have of the pieces I've produced would be much lower if CK did not read my work before it is published.

Like Otis, Pauly, and Gene before me (to name three), I got into my current profession through blogging. Blogging is a solitary pursuit. Even on team blogs, the posts that are produced are written by one person. That person might spend a lengthy amount of time writing the post but in the end it is his/her creation alone. That's why I feel that blogging can't supplant more polished forms of writing. Blogging is the instant ramen of writing: it's quick and it can be tasty but it will never rise to the level of gourmet cuisine.

Blogs were the pre-cursor to Twitter. The problem that blog-writers encountered -- which Twitter users do not -- is that the act of writing something that people will want to read requires (1) passable writing skills, (2) a good writing voice, and (3) something interesting to say (or an interesting way to say something otherwise mundane). The vast majority of bloggers lacked one or more of those three attributes and as a result had difficulties finding and maintaining an audience. There's the added problem of a lack of collaboration in blog-writing, which tends to make the writing of a lesser quality than you can find at more traditional sources.

Twitter, with its 140-character limit, doesn't demand much in the way of skill, voice, or even interest. That has allowed Twitter to develop a larger userbase than blogging did and, like many things in life, for those individuals Twitter has become what they made of it. There's no "right" way to use Twitter. Some people use it as a public IM service among a group of friends; others use it as a self-promotional or marketing tool. A third group might find it best-suited for random thoughts or quips while still others think it is perfect for social and cultural commentary. Let's not forget poker players who use it to update tournament progress or whine about bad beats. Still, Twitter "writing" is limited to 140 characters. If blogging is a bowl of instant ramen, Twitter-ing is the powder packet in the ramen package. It instantly provide flavor but is otherwise unrecognizable as food.

Blogging and Twitter-ing have become entrenched elements of the poker community, for which I'm grateful. They have certainly enriched that community. The problem with them is that they have pushed the community to clamor for more content faster. It seems to me that we may be crossing a tipping point where polished, high-quality writing -- the type that is collaborative and takes more time, voice and skill to produce -- is receding in prominence in favor of instant ramen. And while most people will admit to the guilty pleasure of a bowl of ramen now and again, a diet solely of ramen and the chemicals in a ramen flavor package are not enough nourishment to sustain a healthy body.