Always a New Page

What a lovely Lettera.

I have had a lot of trouble making the Squarespace blog interface do what I want it to. It has been way less intuitive than my previous platform’s. (There goes my Squarespace sponsorship.) (I don’t have a Squarespace sponsorship.)

No really. When I started blogging in earnest fourteen or so years ago, blogging was so simple! You just blasted your words into a screen, upload one image, and hit “post.” It was nearly frictionless—hardly a step between impulse to get an idea in front of my few, but loyal, readers and that idea’s publication. That ease was a big part of what made it work. It meant there weren’t many pauses where you could have second thoughts—important for an overanalyzer like me. And it led to the specific gratification of garnering feedback immediately, which affirmed the fact that I was writing in the world and having connections with folks who cared about the same stuff.

I know that this platform is more powerful than the old one. It can do cooler stuff, and reach more people differently. But at what cost? What gets lost when we are fiddling around with the folderol of formatting and complex workflow? Is it worth the tradeoff: the cost in actually seeing your impulse come to fruition quickly, effortlessly?

These are things I think about. A lot.

Because a typewriter is frictionless, once you get some facility with it. There is no pause between the intention to make a letter or word and the letter or word coming into existence. No one has seen it yet, of course--not unless you decide to share it, with one person or the world. But it already exists. There's been no delay in making it exist.

Eventually I will find a way to bring the spontaneity and grace of typewriting to the blog here. Baby steps! Because I want so badly for this space to be a lively invitation to all who find it to have the typewriter immediacy in their lives. In any way they find it, any way they need it.

So I will hang tough and make it happen. It is worth it. Watch this space!