Of course there is no license--no MBA, CPA, or DDS required--not even good taste, thank God. Just some skin and flesh in the game, if you're man enough to make yourself vulnerable. Because starting all of this and keeping at it is no simple thing. Or maybe it is.
The challenges of writing will present themselves immediately. And the challenges are great. Are you a fool? Are you naive? Are you saying too much? Too little? Are you bold enough to say THAT in public? Are you stupid enough? All sorts of gremlins sit on your shoulder whispering in your ear. Some are encouragements. Some are seductions. Some groundless fears. Some dangerous delusions. How a writer responds to these whisperings will determine what kind of writer he or she will become. It’s a very personal thing. My own approach is to listen carefully, then ignore all of it.
While we're at it, on the notion of 'blooks,' I'd argue that the first blook was Locke's The Bombast Transcripts, featuring "browser-free" content from EGR, published in January 2002.
More nuggets from the interview:
Certainly.Well, if you mean influence as it’s usually measured, then the clear answer is the Top 100 hit magnets on Technorati. No one could say, and I wouldn’t suggest, that they’re not having a lot of influence on whomever is hitting their blogs. They must, right? And the more people who hit those sites, the more people will hit those sites. In this sense, we’ve replicated the mass media model. Which is inevitable in some sense. I mean, there will always be a top-10, a top-100, in anything you can measure. It’s like fashion. Beige is the new black. Chartreuse is the new black. Whatever.
Then there’s the very different phenomenon of going to x-random site and reading something, hearing something, seeing something that changes your mind, touches your heart. It could be someone you’ve never heard of. It could be someone whose voice is just emerging. His or her real voice. Real in the sense that it cuts through all the posturing and bullshit and reminds you what you are, what we are. That kind of influence can’t be measured the same way. And it’s possible that, by measuring things that can be easily measured, we miss entirely the things that can’t be measured at all.
