Mellow morning. I was dogged tired yesterday, too exhausted even to blog (as regular readers may have noticed). I even had a Catholic topic to mention: the great Harry Potter debate. I guess the exorcist Gabriele Amorth issued another statement, excoriating the series. It's leading to yet another firestorm, as the Harry Potter fans bring out the long knives in response to what they perceive to be the attackers' wicked switchblades. I find the whole thing tiresome, but if you're into this type of bickering, I guess Mark Shea's blog has a spirited discussion taking place: 164 comments so far.
I wonder what would happen if Amorth issued a statement against Star Trek? Would the Trekkies of the world rise up similarly?
And by the way: I don't have an opinion. My wife and oldest child enjoy the series. Though I think media influences people and the HP series will have a positive or negative effect on its readers, it's only one effect among hundreds (thousands, millions) of others. If Satan is seeping into my household through Rowling, I'm hopefully flooding him out with an assortment of other things, from prayer, crucifixes, and holy water to music, chess, and playful love.
Things are going well at TDE. The visitors keep increasing.
And I'm having a good time writing it these past few weeks. I've always enjoyed it, but especially so lately. Readers have probably noticed that I'm writing more script and offering more commentary. It was a conscious choice. If I'm going to write a blog, I might as well improve myself as a writer while doing it. I've said elsewhere that blog writing is "electronic graffiti." I don't actually believe that, but blogging does share a major element of graffiti: there's very little editing. Blogging is perhaps most precisely described as a lot of first-draft publishing (depending on the blogger, of course). The stuff I publish here looks a lot like my first drafts of articles, and that's not a bad thing. My wife for years has complained that my editing "polishes the charm off" my first drafts. That doesn't happen at TDE. You get it all: charm and annoyance. I try to rub out the typos and terribly rough spots, but other than that, you're mostly getting first-draft writing.
That's common throughout the blogosphere, and I think that's part of the blogosphere's attraction. It makes it different from the rest of the literary world, where everything that is published goes through multiple--four? twenty?--drafts, often by two or more sets of eyes.
Well, that's enough first drafting for this morning. I'll be around all day. Expect regular updates.
