In what has turned out to be a nice bit of convergence, I started this post last night (title included), then woke to find a very nice interview of Richard Nash by Guy Gonzalez that helped focus my thoughts.
Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed myself hesitating to write a few comments on sites for fear of A) appearing like a self-marketing weasel, and B) appearing like a know-it-all weasel. It’s not so much that I’m trying to pass along anything even remotely controversial, but that, as a writer, I’m intensely conscious of how my comments or feedback may affect other readers’ or visitors’ perceptions. To the extent that all information in a conversation affects the next part of that conversation, these things are inevitable. Distortion in this sense is neither positive or negative: it’s simply the effect of the weight of one’s words on the subject at hand. [ Read more ]