The Anti-Art of Blogging

I have night owl tendencies, even though my middle aged body is fighting against this well-worn habit. So several times a week I will watch late night television: the house is quiet, I am relaxed and in need of a good laugh, and I have sole rights to the clicker. [If I could turn this whole routine on its head, wake up in the morning at dawn, meditate for an hour, then get on the treadmill while doing the laundry--followed by a nice hot breakfast on the table at 7:30-- I would, but that would be like going against gravity. Besides, my husband would think I'd been replaced by a mutant from another planet.]

Sometimes if there is a boring guest or lull on Letterman, I will turn to Charlie Rose on PBS. The other night I happened to catch Nora Ephron talking about blogging. It sums up what my editor, Patty Poore, at OLD-HOUSE INTERIORS was trying to convey to me a few weeks ago, when I was rewriting her merging of three of my blog entries from "In the Pantry". She thought I'd edited out all of the immediacy of my blogging and she was right. [The "Musings" essay, "The Empty House", will appear on the back page of the upcoming fall/winter issue of EARLY HOMES, a newsstand publication by OHI.]

Because of the wonders of TEVO, I was able to rewind and pause until I jotted down this transcription:

CHARLIE ROSE:

Is there a secret to that (blogging)?

NORA EPHRON:

Blogs are different. Blogs are almost like a soap bubble. They're what you think at the very moment you're writing it.

CR:

So the thing to do is sit down and write and whatever comes to your head, do it.

NE:

Sit down and write and write it fast and if you've been working on it for more than an hour and a half, it's not a blog. It's something else.

CR:

It's an essay!

NE:

Well, I don't know what it is, but you've taken too long on it, because it should really feel as if its true at that moment, and then not much longer than that.

[I'm also with her on the turtleneck concept of hiding the middle-aged neck!]