“& quickly shot off.”

Dialogue from Two Gentlemen of Verona which I found last night, quoted in Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare: The Biography .

That’s now the official slogan of my blog, and as soon as I get a chance to tweak the site design some more I’ll (hopefully, lol) figure out a way to display it somewhere.

It captures the way I see blog writing perfectly, which is no doubt why, with only a week of this blogging business under my belt, I find myself blissfully addicted. I should mention that I’ve been a blog reader for years now, and have joined the conversation of various blogs by leaving comments, so I have a sense of the pacing of this medium. It’s a huge conversation and while on the one hand it’s too sprawling to be considered “topical” in the classic sense (there are plenty of people, today, blogging about last week’s news), on the other hand, unless you want to sit in your own little corner talking to yourself, you need to find spots where the interest is sparking and jump in to contribute.

I like the water cooler analogy of the blogosphere — it’s much more apt, not to mention respectful, than the “mob” analogy that some find so comforting — but it’s also wilder than the typical impromptu office chitchat. So it’s more like a crowded party, and the trick is to float, keep your ear cocked for the liveliest clutch of conversationalists, and be ready to fire off that oh-so-fine volly.