Calling All Bloggers – George Lucas Syndrome
March 27, 2007
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Posted by Ray Fowler
Calling all bloggers – I need your help. I just completed my third week of blogging, and find that I am struggling with George Lucas Syndrome.
“What is George Lucas Syndrome?” you ask. George Lucas Syndrome is the compulsive tendency to continue working on projects after you have released them to the general public.
I find that I keep going back to old posts after they have been published and making small changes here and there – tidying up the grammar, reviewing word choice, adding extra ideas that came later.
I am trying to find the happy medium between viewing blogging as a conversation and as a form of written communication. I notice that some high profile bloggers are quite content to leave spelling or grammatical errors or typos or rushed thinking in their posts. This is blogging as conversation. When we talk with someone, we don’t have the luxury of going back and editing our words.
And yet blogging is also written communication, which means that someone may stumble across the conversation weeks or even years after the post was originally published. Should they encounter the conversation as it initially took place, or is it okay to sharpen and clarify your thoughts for future readers?
I would love to get the feedback of some more experienced bloggers here. Do you ever struggle with George Lucas Syndrome?
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Categories: Blog, Personal
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Oh no, I never heard of George Lucas syndrome, and now I think I have it. 🙂
Must be an inherited gene in there… I used to always constantly touch up papers in school, never satisfied. And now, as a playwright, I still want to fine-tune and update my scripts, even after they’ve gone off to the publisher. I hate to have email that isn’t spelled correctly or is grammatically incorrect. And, when I respond to blogs, I re-read way too many times to make sure they’re “OK”.
Sigh – I understand, though, that with the Internet out there for what seems to be perpetuity, you would want what’s out there to be good!
If you find a “cure”, please keep us posted!
Bethany,
Aahh, someone who can relate! Did you know I have even gone back to this blog entry and tweaked it a few times since I first published it? This can’t go on.
How about other bloggers out there? Do you have any advice for me?
Most of my traffic comes from google so if I have time and I notice a problem, I’ll correct it. I have no problem correcting errors because they are usually not what the conversion was about. I think it actually aids future communication.
If you feel uncomfortable about it, you can always add an update at the end of the post letting future readers know that it’s been edited.
What’s really annoying is not noticing problems with the title of a post before you’ve published and then realizing that the link from your RSS feed will be broken if you fix it. (I do this a lot on my Reformed Chicks blog).
Thanks, Michele, for your comments. That is helpful. And I will watch out for title changes. That’s something I haven’t run into yet – or maybe I did and I didn’t know it!