I was thinking about a recent post by Anne Zelenka on GigaOm titled Tech Blogging: The Web Mind at Warp Speed where it's suggested that Tech Bloggers (including me) should write more, not less:

"….I’m not convinced, however, that better ideas emerge by holding back on them, deeply thinking them, and polishing them until they’re just right. With the global Internet mind, offering more tentative and provisional ideas and doing it faster may be a better strategy than sitting in an isolation chamber, devoid of feedback.

Writing coach Angela Booth tells writers they should write more, not less:

Many years ago, I wanted to be a “good” writer. So I wrote less. I became obsessive about revision — polishing the life out of my writing. It finally dawned on me that “good” doesn’t mean slow. In fact the faster I wrote (which was my natural inclination anyway), the more quality I could winnow from the chaff.

There’s a parallel that can be drawn with tech blogging — not just that individual bloggers become better writers as they write more, but that the ideas we come up with as a community get better as they are batted about the blogosphere.

I believe the sheer amount of blog posting I do on Webmetricsguru.com, Artnewyorkcity.com, Smartmobs.com, my-metrics.com (new) has moved my thinking and writing foward in a way that would never have happened if I held myself back, tried to perfect each post, and posted less.

Comparing Blog Writing to Art (I've found both complement themselves for me) I've tried to paint and write where the ideas from my writing fed my painting.  One example of that was the painting I did of the GPhone in Google Truth - Part 2 - Google Phone and The Long Tail Painting where I painted the Google Phone:

In fact, and I know some of my artists friends disagree with me on this, my quick and prolific blogging translated into paintings I would make myself finish in one sitting - as if I wanted to dash off my work and then display it online, often at www.artnewyorkcity.com, much as if it's another form of blog post (which it is, in a way).

But some art, in can be argued, can't be done in one sitting - and I've found myself more at odds, hearing that, (which is often why it's best to follow you "gut instincts").

Which gets back to another thought I had - earlier on last year when I wrote about Yet another visit to the Met Museum and compared the paintings of Van Gogh (which usually were done in one or two sittings) and Cezanne, which were often the result of several sittings, as many as 100 sittings in some cases:

Paul Cezanne - Still Life with Apples (a painting that took as many as 100 sittings to "complete")

"…Then I looked at a couple of Van Gogh paintings and I compared, mentally, the idea that Cezanne's still life's took up to 100 sittings to get to where he might feel they were "finished" while Van Gogh would paint his paintings in one or two sittings.

Today, it seems totally unimportant that Cezanne spent years on a some paintings while Van Gogh spent hours and the paintings of both artist are satisfying though they appeal to different parts of me.  Van Gogh paints pure life energy - the electric power of life while Cezanne's work is much more measured.  I have always wanted to be like Cezanne, but my actual impulses run much closer to Van Gogh and my best work was impulsive - both in art and in Search Engine work. 

I found that while I admired Cezanne, more than any other artist, my own approach was much more like Van Gogh - I need to express myself - quickly, as directly as I could …. just like a blogger can - and often does  - and blogging quickly was actually better for me than doing polished posts.